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DidYouKnow?
Toomuch or too little knowledge can be a dangerous
thing.There are some tidbits, however, that one cannot
ignore and should be learnt for just the pleasure of
knowing randomfacts. Here are some of our favourite.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin-
the founders of Google-were
willing to sell the now billion
dollar company to Excite,
which was another search
engine, for under $1 million
in 1999. Excite turned them
down and really lost out.
Many people only think
about Steve Jobs when it
comes to Apple. But there
was a third founder of Apple,
Ronald Wayne, who sold
his 10% stake for US$800
in 1976.
In a survey conducted in the
United Kingdom in 2008,
58%of British teens thought
Sherlock Holmes was a real
man while 20% thought
Winston Churchill was.
John Pierpont “J.P.” Mor-
gan, an American financier,
banker, and art collector who
dominated corporate finance
and industrial consolidation
during his time, once offered
$100,000 to anyone who
could figure out why his face
was so red. No one solved the
mystery.
GuinnessWorld Records lists
the Mona Lisa as having the
highest insurance value for
a painting in history. On
permanent display at The
Louvre museum in Paris, the
Mona Lisa was assessed at
US$100million on December
14, 1962. Taking inflation
into account, the 1962 value
would be around US$780
million today. After Leon-
ardo Da Vinci’s death, King
Francis I of France hung the
Mona Lisa in his bathroom.
Japanese Tsutomu Yama-
guchi was in Hiroshima for
work when the first A-bomb
hit, and made it home to
Nagasaki for the second one.
He lived to be 93.
A brain freeze, also known as
ice-creamheadache and cold-
stimulus headache (spheno-
palatine ganglioneuralgia),
is a form of brief pain or
headache commonly associ-
atedwith the consumption of
cold beverages or food such
as ice cream. It is caused
by having something cold
touch the roof of the mouth
(palate), and is believed to
result from a nerve response
causing rapid constriction
and swelling of blood vessels
or a “referring” of pain from
the roof of the mouth to the
head.
The all time favourite choco-
late multipurpose spread
Nutella was invented during
WWII, when an Italian pas-
try maker mixed hazelnuts
into chocolate to extend his
chocolate ration.
Jonas Salk, an American
medical researcher and vi-
rologist who discovered and
developed the first successful
polio vaccine, declined to
patent his vaccine. “There is
no patent,” he said. “Could
you patent the sun?”
Sean Connery turned down
the role of Gandalf in Lord of
the Rings. “I read the book.
I read the script. I saw the
movie. I still don’t under-
stand it.”