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Among those accomplishments however, he could also speak 350 words per minute; making him the fasted random word speaker in the world, even to this day. Kennedy seemed to be fond of a bunch of words that no one else could understand, in more ways than one; his favorite poem was Ulysses. 

His speed carried on to his reading; he could take in 1200 words per minute. A more meaningful record perhaps; Kennedy continues to rank highly in the public opinion ratings of US presidents.

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The Lo’ihi Seamount began forming 400 000 years ago, and is expected to peak it’s head out in about 10 000-100 000 years from now. In the meantime, it’s slowly expanding Hawaii’s land. It has also been known to cause several major Earthquakes, one of which lasted several months. 

Almost like a living organism, this volcano has been growing at a constant rate. Yes it’s expanding the Hawaiian territories now, but one day it can completely drown it in a sea of molten rock and lava. 

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Though he did not immediately set foot on the island, in January of 1779, when he did, thousands of Hawaiians arrived, praising him and showering him with gifts.

Why? The natives thought the sails on Cook’s ships were identical to imagery of their sex god, Lono. Cook quickly realized what it was all about, but decided to play along. He allowed the Hawaiians to cover him in pig fat, and then used some fireworks he had in his boat. 

After that, he enjoyed the perks of being the sex god for a while before leaving. When he returned, however, things weren’t so great. Due to storms, Cook’s ships were pretty beaten up, which offended the Hawaiians so much that they attacked him. This is where it gets disturbing

He was “clubbed, repeatedly knifed, half-drowned and battered about the head with a rock.” After that, he was torn to pieces and eaten. 

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It’s also the home of staple crop, including potato. Wild potatoes contain solanine and tomatine, toxic compounds believed to defend the plants against attacks from fungi, bacteria, and eventually people. While cooking usually breaks down most chemicals, it was useless against those two. 

People eventually noticed that guanaco and vicuña (wild relatives of the llama) lick clay before eating poisonous plants, and so they mimicked the process by dipping potatoes into “gravy” made from clay and water. They also worked towards creating the non-toxic potatoes we know of today. Some would argue however, that the fast food industry has made potatoes poisonous all over again. 

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Now it has claimed its rightful throne as the best-selling video tape of all time. Logically speaking, it is kind of impossible to break this record, seeing as how VHS tapes are almost extinct. 

However, even when it was released in Blu-ray for a limited time, the film sold 3.83 units and made around $101.14 million. After all this Simba, you deserve to call yourself king. 

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The experiment was conducted at Gatorland, a tourist attraction near Kissimmee, Florida. William Mickelsen, the Florida Orchestra’s star tuba player and one of his students played different notes on the tuba to see how gators reacted. When a B flat was played, alligators swam toward the tuba players. 

When the tuba players went down to the boardwalk and played through the wood, the male alligators even repeated the B flat. It was also confirmed that it is only the mating male alligators who are attracted. 

They are famously noisy during the spring (mating season), which could explain a link to the response to the B flat. Tim Williams, an alligator wrangler who guided the group, claims to have also heard gators respond to the sound of airboats. 

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What happened after was a series of ridiculous coincidences… and parallel life choices. Both boys were independently named James by their adopted parents. Neither knew he had a twin. Both were great at math and bad at spelling. Both had childhood dogs named Toy.

Both worked as sheriffs. Both bought light blue Chevys. Both took vacations at Pas Grille beach in Florida. Both liked Miller Lite and Salem cigarettes. Both got migraines. Both married women named Linda. Both divorced their Lindas and remarried women named Betty.

Both had sons who they named James Alan, and James Allan. Finally, at age 39, a record search reunited them. And when one of the James’ divorced his Betty, his brother James served as his best man for his third marriage, to a woman named Sandy.

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The first instance happened in Matera, Italy, but he only had light burns on his fingers that time. In both cases, neither person was badly hurt. Being struck by lightning wasn’t really the only bad thing to happen to Jim Caviezel, though.

Ever since his portrayal of Jesus, he claims he has had quite a bit of trouble finding acting jobs.

As you likely know, The Passion of the Christ was a 2004 film directed by Mel Gibson about the last twelve hours of the life of Jesus Christ and his resurrection. The film drew much criticism for its portrayal of Jews, its graphic nature, and its artistic differences from the scriptures it was based on. 

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Kirchner’s presidency is also notable because it is the first time in Argentine history where a president was replaced by his spouse by election. Kirchner’s presidency had been scrutinized because some felt, prior to her husband’s death, the country was being run by a diarchy. More criticism has come from her excessive spending on clothing, jewelry, and shoes. 

She has never worn the same outfit twice, and has even been criticized for arriving late due to taking too long to choose an outfit. Since her husband’s death, she has only worn black clothing, but has still not reused a single outfit in that entire time. 

According to Perfil Weekly Newspaper, she has worn more than two hundred completely separate black outfits (that is, outfits without any common pieces). 

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There’s a disorder that actually makes you pull your hair out and sometimes even eat it!

Like OCD, TTM is a compulsive disorder that in some way brings comfort to the person who has it by pulling out their hair. Some people with TTM even eat the hair after they pull it out. A person who eats the hair afterwards is said to have “Rapunzel Syndrome.”

The body is unable to digest the hair, though, and tends to back up in the person’s system. It then causes intestinal problems. Some babies suffer from TTM, but the peak ages are between 9 and 13. It can be triggered by depression or stress. It causes the afflicted noticeable hair loss, distress, and social or functional impairment. The disorder is hard to treat.

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New bananas are grown basically by cloning, similar to that of a rosebush, making every single banana an exact genetic copy of each other! The only reason the banana has survived for so long is due to continued breeding done by humans. 

Bananas are a hybrid of two different plants, one being the South Asian Musa acuminate and the other being the Musa balbisiana. Thousands of years ago these two plants had a strange genetic offspring from cross pollination, which was the sterile banana plant. 

Because both of the other plants are virtually unpalatable, ancient peoples began to cultivate or “clone” the sterile banana plant, which would eventually become one of the most popular fruits in the world! 

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However, Madonna is partly responsible for his parody of “Like A Virgin.” She asked a friend how long they thought it’d take for Yankovic to satirize her song “Like a Virgin” to “Like a Surgeon.” 

Her friend was also a friend of Yankovic’s manager, Jay Levey. Levey pitched the idea to Yankovic who liked the idea and decided to write the song. It is the first and only time known that Yankovic has gotten a parody idea directly from the original artist. 

Yankovic’s music video to compliment “Like a Surgeon” took ideas and cues from Madonna’s original music video of “Like a Virgin.” His music video takes place in a hospital while Madonna’s was set in Venice. At one point Yankovic rides a gurney which parodied Madonna who rode in a canal boat. Also, both videos feature a lion. 

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It was hosted by the adorable Amanda Bynes. Now, Sypro the Dragon was equally adorable. Him and his friend Sparx the dragonfly fought against the Gnasty Gnorc and his minions. If you’ve experienced both, you may have noticed that the music for the “Wizard’s Peak” stage in Spyro the Dragon has an oddly familiar melody and instrumental to the Amanda show’s theme. 

The two songs were composed by the same person; Stewart Copeland. Perhaps it is quite appropriate for both the TV show and the video game to contain the same upbeat and uplifting song; they both after all are light, fun and worth seeing even today. 

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The apartment was completely livable down to a hutch filled with china and a Playstation 2! However, one drawback was that there was no running water, so inhabitants were forced to use mall bathrooms. Why would someone do this? Being an artist, Townsend claims he was “inspired” by a mall advertisement for Christmas that featured an enthusiastic female voice about how nice it would be to live at the mall. 

He claims that he did this “out of a compassion to understand the mall more and life as a shopper.” When Townsend was discovered he was arrested, yet the authorities were so intrigued by the entire situation that they videotaped what they found. 

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The trophy had been stolen during a rare public stamp exhibition at Westminster Central Hall just four months before the 1966 FIFA World Cup in England was meant to kick off. The trophy was found a week later wrapped in newspaper at the bottom of a garden by Pickles while he was out on a walk with his owner David Crobett.

The safe got Pickles’ owner a 6000 pound reward and Pickles a starring role in the 1966 film The Spy with the Cold Nose. Pickles died in 1967 when he choked on his lead while chasing a cat. 

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They have extremely truncated bodies, black-grey feathers, and a pink beak. The skin of both female and male parrots however, turn yellow during breeding season. 

Like every other parrot, the male has a cloaca; a prosterior opening used for intestinal, urinary, and reproductive tracts. However, unlike other parrots this cloaca can be inverted into a hemipenis that erects during mating. 

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Now that Jackie Chan has retired from action movies and is moving to become a more dramatic actor, you might think he’d consider this kind of a blemish on his career. But it turns out he claims he has no regrets about it. 

Jackie Chan isn’t alone in getting his start from not so family oriented means, though. David Duchovny has a past very similar to Chan’s, having also starred in a porn series before his X-Files days. Cameron Diaz once had a sex tape, which, unlike Chan, she has spent years trying to block the distribution of. 

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger also doesn’t have a perfectly clean record. Before he was the Terminator and before he was Mr Olympia, he posed in his birthday suit for a gay magazine. Prior to his days as Joey Tribbiani on the show Friends, Matt LeBlanc starred in an early 90’s adult series, similar to Chan and Duchovny. 

Probably most strange of all is Sylvester Stallone, who starred in a 1970 pornographic film which he was paid $200 for. The film gained a large degree of notoriety after Stallone’s success in the Rocky and Rambo films. 

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Shortly after its release, it was found that regions like Tibet and Taiwan were included as separate countries. Tibet has had a long history as a territory of the People’s Republic of China, and because the game treated Tibet as a sovereign nation, China wasn’t happy. 

Officially, it was banned because the game “threatened its content harmful to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity… [that] seriously violates Chinese law and has been strongly protested by our nation’s gamers.” 

Sports Interactive responded by saying that a fixed Chinese version of the game would be released, and clarified that the offending version wasn’t intended to be released in China in the first place. That version wasn’t available in Chinese, but had been imported, downloaded, or sold in illegal software shops. 

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The relationship between the way we now use “orientation” and “east” is due to how during the Middle Ages, many maps were drawn with east at the top. Today, most maps are drawn with north at the top, obviously. 

But many maps from non-Western traditions are oriented different ways. Old Japanese maps used to depict the imperial palace at the top and center of the map. Certain Medieval European maps that were oriented east were centered with Jerusalem in the middle. 

Often today, maps involving bodies of water are oriented around them. Cities bordering seas are sometimes drawn with the sea on top, and route and channel maps are sometimes oriented to the road or river they describe. 

Probably the most notable example of a map being oriented not to the north is with the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, which are typically drawn with the pole at the center of the map because of how difficult it is to accurately draw them on a conventional map. 

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Keep in mind that this is a very basic model of a Death Star; there is no GPS, radio, leather seating, crew quarters, drink holders, etc. These additional accessories would raise the price to $31 septillions. 

So what do you think; is it better to use that money to, I don’t know, fix the economic crisis, or will the investment be worth it.

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