American gangster films of the 1920s, 30s and 40s have contributed a wealth of colourful slang to the English language, much of which is still floating around popular culture to this day: “sleeping with the fishes”, “concrete overshoes”, “G-man”, “Chicago typewriter”, “goon”, “big house”, “private dick”, “speakeasy”, “Chicago overcoat”, “ride the lightning”, “fuzz”, and many others. But while many of […]
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With the Super Bowl this weekend, we thought we’d do a “Football facts” roundup to help you impress your buddies with amazingly interesting Football knowledge. 891) Buffalo wings were invented sometime around the 1960s by either John Young or Frank and Teressa Bellissimo in Buffalo, New York. The spreading of this tasty appetizer was relatively slow until Football stepped in. […]
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1026: Bed bugs reproduce via the male bed bug literally stabbing the female in the abdomen with his hypodermic genitalia rather than using the female’s reproductive tract. Once he’s stabbed the female, he then releases his sperm insider her body cavity. The sperm ultimately travel via the female’s blood to sperm storage structures in her body. The males also are […]
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1016: Mistletoe tends to spring from bird droppings that have fallen on trees, with the seeds having passed through the digestive tract of birds. From this, it should come as no surprise that the name “mistle” or “missel” meant “dung” and “toe,” which came from the Anglo-Saxon “tan,” meant “twig.” Thus, mistletoe is another way to essentially say “poop twig.” […]
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1006) While Amanda McBroom is probably best known for her role as Judge Advocate General Captain Philippa Louvois in what is generally considered one of the best Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, The Measure of a Man, it might also surprise you to learn that she wrote the song, The Rose, first made famous by Bette Midler in the […]
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997) Ever wonder how blind people tell when they’ve wiped enough after going to the bathroom? Well, wonder no more. To begin with, the vast majority of the world’s population uses water to clean, rather than starting with toilet paper. With something like a bidet with reasonable pressure, you just spray for a bit and use toilet paper to dry- […]
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983) On July 21, 1969 at 02:56 UTC, Neil Armstrong forever stamped his name in the history books by putting his foot on the Moon. Armstrong getting to do this almost never happened due to the fact that he turned his application in to NASA about a week after the June 1, 1962 deadline, making him ineligible for that historic […]
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974) At the age of nine years old, actor Liam Neeson joined the All Saints Boxing Club put together by his parish priest, Father Darragh. He continued boxing until 17, according to Neeson becoming “juvenile champion of Northern Ireland three times and Irish runner-up a couple times in my weight division.” However, after one of his final fights, when he […]
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964) When Parcel Post Service first launched in America on January 1, 1913, there were few guidelines on what could be mailed. As a result, a handful of parents, spotting a bargain, began mailing their children. The first known case of this was the child of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Beauge of Ohio only a few weeks after the […]
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If you’ve noticed the fewer number of articles being published the last couple weeks on TIFO, this post is the cause. 
It now holds the record for the longest time spent researching and writing any single article on TIFO by a very good margin. It turns out there are an awful lot of Star Wars “facts” commonly repeated all […]
Quick Fact #917: Lyman Ward and Cindy Pickett, better known as Mr. and Mrs. Bueller on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, first met on the set of that film and subsequently got married in 1986. Like in the movie, they had two children, a boy and a girl; unfortunately, they did not name them Ferris and Jeanie, but rather Shane and […]
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With the Super Bowl this weekend, we thought we’d do a “Football facts” roundup to help you impress your buddies with amazingly interesting Football knowledge. 891) Buffalo wings were invented sometime around the 1960s by either John Young or Frank and Teressa Bellissimo in Buffalo, New York. The spreading of this tasty appetizer was relatively slow until Football stepped in. […]
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Quick Fact 881: On February 10, 1355 in Oxford, England, Walter Spryngeheuse and Roger de Chesterfield, two students at Oxford University, got in an argument with tavern owner John Croidon over the quality of the drinks he was serving. In the end, drinks were thrown in the face of Croidon, after which the two students attacked him. Soon the fight […]
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Quick Fact 871: John F. Kennedy’s sister, Rosemary Kennedy, was ultimately found to have an IQ of only 60-70, something the family went to elaborate lengths to hide. Finally, at the age of 23 as she began to become “rebellious,” with Joseph Kennedy Sr. worrying she might embarrass the family, Kennedy Sr. learned of a relatively new medical procedure that […]
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Quick Fact 861: Play-Doh was originally used as a wallpaper cleaner, with the compound debuting 22 years before Play-Doh hit the shelves, in a last ditch effort to save a dying company, the Cincinnati based soap company, Kutol. (Wallpaper cleaner wasn’t really used much anymore as people transitioned away from coal heat.) The woman who suggested the idea to use […]
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Quick Fact 851: On March 13, 1962, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lyman Lemnitzer, submitted a proposal to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, developed by the Joint Chiefs and the Department of Defense outlining plans to, among other things, commit various acts of terrorism on U.S. soil and then frame the Cubans for it […]
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Quick Fact 841: If you’ve ever felt like your friends are more popular, happier, and wealthier than you… well, on average, you’re probably right. This all comes down to something known as the Generalized Friendship Paradox. The Friendship Paradox was first proposed in 1991 by sociologist Scott L. Feld, who demonstrated that your friends, on average, will have more friends […]
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Quick Fact 831: A few years ago a man from Singapore became an Internet sensation thanks to his unique name, “Batman bin Suparman” which in English would translate as “Batman son of Suparman.” So what happened after? He was arrested in 2013 for robbing a store. He also had previously stolen his brother’s (Nurazman Suparman) ATM card, using it to […]
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