Fascinating Facts and Trivia

A fierce gust of wind blew 45 year old Vittorio Luise’s car into a river near Naples, Italy in 1980. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore—where a tree blew over and killed him.

Termites have been known to eat food twice as fast when heavy metal music is playing.

Ha ha ANT MUSIC!

The record for the fastest man made object is a manhole cover launched by a nuclear bomb. A high speed camera recording the lid only caught one frame of it moving, meaning that it was travelling at over 125,000 miles per hour.

There is an official Wizard of New Zealand. In 1990, the Prime Minister of New Zealand appointed Ian Brackenbury Channell, who was an old friend, as the Wizard of New Zealand. He is even given an annual stipend.

The next time you’re wearing a pair of jeans, take a look at the pockets. Do you see those little metal studs at the corners? They’re not just there to add some extra pizzazz to your pants, they actually have a purpose. Rivets, as they’re called by Levi Strauss, are placed on certain spots to add extra support where the denim is more likely to wear out and rip.

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie died as a result of the vast amounts of radiation she was exposed to during her groundbreaking work. But her body wasn’t the only thing to absorb the emissions. Her clothes and belongings—including her furniture, cookbooks, and laboratory notes—were also saturated with the deadly radium particles. That’s why, even though Curie died around 85 years ago, her possessions are still radioactive.

And since radium has a half-life of 1,601 years, they’re likely to stay that way for a while. Currently, Curie’s laboratory notebooks are being safely stored in lead-lined boxes at France’s Bibliotheque National in Paris. Anyone who wants to see them has to first to sign a liability waiver and then agree to wear protective gear.

Bruce Willis played the legendary John McClane in the Die Hard action-film franchise. But before Willis landed the role, the part was offered to singer Frank Sinatra, who was in his 70s at the time. While this may sound strange, it all has to do with a legal obligation.

The movie was based on the 1979 Roderick Thorp novel Nothing Lasts Forever, which was a follow-up to 1966’s The Detective. In 1968, that novel had been made into a film starring Sinatra (not as John McClane, but as a former New York cop who becomes a private investigator). When Sinatra signed on for the first film, it was in his contract that the studio had to offer him the main part in the sequel. However, when that eventually happened, Ol’ Blue Eyes refused the role.

Speaking of John McClaine-Bruce Willis maintains that Die Hard isn't a Christmas film but there is evidence to suggest he is wrong-for example there is a socking great Christmas tree in Mr Tokagi's centre hall in the skyscraper decorated with tinsel and baubles and at the end of the film you can hear Dean Martin's Let It Snow being played, which traditionally is played at Christmas, although that wasn't meant as a Christmas song.

Legendary singers Barry White and Gene Pitney provided songs for Hanna-Barbera's The Banana Splits!! The show was created by brothers Sid and Marty Krofft who also created H.R. Pufnstuf, another weird and wacky world of characters starring Oliver's Jack Wilde(Artful Dodger)