French short story writer Guy de  Maupassant HATED the Eiffel tower.

Holbein carpets are named in  honor of Hans Holbein the Younger, who was known for painting King Henry VIII. The word Rubenesque comes from Peter Paul Rubens, who liked to paint zaftig women.

The word zaftig comes from the Yiddish zaftik, which means juicy or succulent. The same person designed St. Louis’s Gateway Arch and the TWA terminal at JFK airport.

Double Stuf Oreos are only 1.86 times as “stuf’ed” as classic Oreos. Actress Glenda Jackson won two Emmys, two Oscars, and then became a member  of the British House of Commons. To Have and Have Not was made into a movie after  Howard Hawks told Ernest Hemingway he could make a great film from Hemingway’s worst book.

The Kalevala is the national epic of Finland. Only one country’s English-language name can  be typed on a single row of a standard QWERTY keyboard; drop its name in the comments  if you can figure it out without Googling. Hi, I’m Erin McCarthy, and this is The List Show.

For regular viewers, you might have noticed we’re doing something a little different today. I would  explain more, but I think the title of the video is probably pretty self-explanatory. We’ve  got 190 facts to go, so let’s run that intro!

Louis Vuitton started out as a trunk maker. St. Patrick wasn’t born in Ireland.

Richard III was the last  English king to die in battle. The world’s largest island in a freshwater  lake is Manitoulin, on Lake Huron. Michael Collins, who fought for Irish  independence, was known as “The Big Fellow.”  Barry Goldwater lost the  1964 presidential election.

The pulmonary arteries are the only arteries in  the human body that carry deoxygenated blood. During the Peasants Revolt of 1381, revolutionary  leader Wat Tyler made it all the way to a face-to-face meeting with King Richard II. Tyler was stabbed in the throat and died.

Willem de Kooning came to the United States  as a stowaway aboard the S. S. Shelley.

On average, tall people perform  better than short people on IQ tests. British doctor William Stark look into the effects  of severely limiting one’s diet by severely limiting his *own* diet. He soon died of scurvy.

Eliza Acton, a struggling poet, wrote a cookbook in 1845 that introduced the custom of  listing ingredients and their quantities. In the mid-1800s, ice from Massachusetts’s  Wenham Lake became a luxury good in England. An ice producing lake in Norway was  subsequently renamed Lake Wenham.

Germany’s second largest city, by population,  is Hamburg. Its fifth largest city is Frankfurt. Early 20th-century Pennsylvania Germans considered  it bad luck to take a bath or change your clothing between Christmas and the New Year.

Time Magazine once ran a headline proclaiming, quote, “Richard Nixon Asked a Reporter to  Watch Panda Sex.” I’m really tempted to provide some context here, but, ya know,  it’s against the rules…that we made up. Adding bubbles to your bath keeps the  water warm for a longer amount of time. Almonds and peaches are in the same genus.

It was prophesied that England’s Henry IV would die in Jerusalem. In fact, he  died in the Abbot of Westminster’s house…in the so-called Jerusalem chamber. Chet Hanks went to Northwestern University.

Sharks have existed longer than trees…on  Earth, at least. Can’t rule out ancient forests in a galaxy far, far away. A group of pugs is called a grumble.

In the English language, four is  the only number whose meaning is equivalent to the amount of letters in its name. The Red Vineyard at Arles is the only named Van Gogh painting known to have sold in his lifetime. The longest-serving justice in U.

S. supreme court history is William O. Douglas, who sat on the bench for more than 36 years. Figuratively speaking… After establishing himself as a media magnate, William Randolph Hearst became a Congressman  representing New York’s 11st District.

The French and Indian War, the American  Revolutionary War, and the Spanish-American War were each brought to a close by peace  agreements known as the Treaty of Paris. George Dewey is the only American to  receive the title "Admiral of the Navy.”  Beethoven reportedly made sure  that his morning coffee was always brewed from exactly 60 coffee beans. Jerry Springer was born in London’s Highgate tube station during World War II.

There are approximately 200 semi-feral cats roaming the grounds of Disneyland. A newborn blue whale can gain as much as 10 pounds an hour from nursing. During Andrew Jackson’s funeral in 1845, his pet parrot had to be removed because  its swearing was disturbing attendees.

According to PBA rules, a bowling  ball can have up to 11 holes. The piece of metal on the end of a pencil  that holds the eraser is called a ferrule. Giraffes have the highest  blood pressure of any mammal.

For more than fifty years, the band ZZ Top  was composed of Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill, known for their trademark long beards, and  their usually beardless drummer … Frank Beard. In 1810, the production of nails represented .4%  of the United States’ gross domestic product. On average, Finns consume over  20 pounds of coffee per year—more than five cups per day.

People in Germany eat over  400 tonnes of meat from kebab shops every day. Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter Alice  had a pet snake named Emily Spinach. The spots on Holstein cows are like human  fingerprints—unique to each individual.

Playing the violin for an  hour burns about 170 calories. When making shuttlecocks for  badminton, the most prized feathers are said to come from the left wings of geese. Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine are the only siblings to have won lead acting Oscars.

Scientists are working on potty-training cows. Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt once  left a White House event in full evening dress to take a quick flight to Baltimore. Dutch speed skater Ireen Wüst is the only athlete to have won an individual gold  medal at five different Olympic Games.

Mozart was a Freemason. The Nazi party banned Felix Salten’s

Bambi: A Life in the Woods, believing that the  deer’s story could be read as an allegory for the struggle of the Jews in Europe. Saguaro cactuses can grow to be more than 40 feet tall; it can take a decade for  them to reach just one inch in height. While imprisoned in The Tower of London, Sir  Walter Raleigh wrote The History of the World. Nicolas Cage once spent $276,000 on a dinosaur  skull, then found out it had been stolen from Mongolia and gave it back.

Abraham Lincoln is the only U. S. President to have obtained a patent.

In 2013, while competing at Wimbledon, Roger Federer was told to change his shoes  because their orange soles violated the All England Club’s dress code. That distinctive smell we associate with rain is known as petrichor. Cowboys linebacker Chuck Howley is the only player from a losing team to be named Super Bowl MVP.

Africa is the only continent with land in the Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere,  Eastern Hemisphere, and Western Hemisphere. Jazz legend Louis Armstrong sometimes signed  personal letters, “Red Beans and Ricely Yours.”  Captain Henry Morgan, the pirate that  inspired the spiced rum brand’s name, was knighted in 1674 by English King Charles II. Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned off the coast of Italy in 1822 after a visit with  fellow poet Lord Byron.

Byron was a literary celebrity who received piles of fan  mail—a phenomenon his wife dubbed Byromania. While growing up, a young David Fincher  was neighbors with George Lucas. Jupiter makes a full rotation on its  axis in only 10 hours, making it the fastest-spinning planet in the solar system.

Scotland’s national animal is the unicorn. Martin Luther King, Jr. received a C in public  speaking at Crozer Theological Seminary. In 1864, residents of Leicester,  England became known as balloon-actics after their incensed response to a  performance by aeronaut Henry Coxwels.

In the 1980s, Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel  was spending up to $2,500 a month on rubber bands just to hold all their cash. Yoda was partly modeled after a photo of Albert Einstein. Ann Jarvis, the creator of Mother’s Day, started a petition in the years after its  adoption to put an end to the holiday.

When Fredric Baur, the man who invented  the Pringles can, passed away in 2008, some of his ashes were buried in one. The human nose is capable of detecting approximately 1 trillion scents. Queen Victoria survived eight assassination attempts.

The space between your eyebrows is the glabella. John Quincy Adams liked to  skinny dip in the Potomac River. The Wife Carrying World Championships take  place each year in SHONE-kah-yar-vee], Finland.

The dot over a lowercase i is called a tittle. As part of David Hasselhoff’s divorce settlement, he retained ownership of the  catchphrase “Don’t Hassle the Hoff.”  Fish cough. Newborn elephants suck their trunks for comfort.

In 1349, King Edward III  banned football in England. On sunny days, the Eiffel Tower  leans slightly towards the shade. Sean Connery turned down the role  of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings.

High schools in New Zealand are allowed  to keep up to a pound of uranium on their premises for educational purposes. Maya Angelou was the first Black woman in San Francisco to be employed as a streetcar conductor. Barry Manilow did not write his hit song   “I Write the Songs.” Between 1912 and 1948, Olympic medals were awarded for architecture,  literature, music, painting, and sculpture.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania was the capital  of the United States for one day in 1777. Actor Bela Lugosi was buried in  full Dracula costume—cape and all. Rejected ideas for Disney’s Seven Dwarfs  included Chesty, Burpy, Hickey, and Awful.

There are more than 200 corpses  frozen on Mount Everest. Newborn babies have nearly 100  more bones than full-grown adults. Winston Churchill called American Prohibition  “an affront to the whole history of mankind.”  Flowers first appeared on Earth  about 130 million years ago.

The United States’ first dog park was  established in 1979 in Berkeley, California. Ancient Rome’s Laws of the Twelve Tables decreed  that the crime for composing or singing a song that slandered another person was death. On average, September is the worst month for the U.

S. stock market. In 1806, a woman named Mary Bateman claimed that her chicken was laying eggs  prophesying the end of the world; it turned out that she was writing messages on lain eggs  and then forcing them back into the bird. Salvador Dali claimed that he used the same  pomade for his mustache as Marcel Proust.

Gaius Caesar supposedly ordered the  future Emperor Vespasian to be covered in mud as punishment for his subpar job  keeping the streets clean as magistrate. When Thomas More refused to acknowledge Henry  VIII’s annulment from Catherine of Aragon and the King’s role as head of the  Church, he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. In a nice break for More,  the sentence was commuted to decapitation.

Anne Boleyn was already pregnant with the future  Queen Elizabeth I during her coronation in 1533. Owls eat small prey whole and then vomit  up indigestible parts like bones and fur. As a young man, Patrick Swayze appeared as Prince  Charming in the exhibition Disney on Parade.

In 1746, Britain made it illegal for  most men in Scotland to wear kilts; first-time offenders could be  imprisoned for six months without bail. Composer Gustav Holst referred  to astrology as his “pet vice.”  In 2004, as part of a promotion for the movie  Ocean’s Twelve, a diamond worth hundreds of thousands of dollars was embedded into a car  driven by Christian Klein in Monaco’s Grand Prix. Klien got in an accident on the first lap of  the race, and the diamond hasn’t been seen since.

Krakow, Poland’s 1610 Community Regulations  suggested giving bagels to women in childbirth. Brian “Young Gun” Krause set a Guinness  World record by spitting a cherry pit over 93 feet during a 2004 competition. The two-wheeled, one-passenger cart used in harness racing is known as a sulky.

In 1988, Steffi Graf became the first tennis player to achieve the so-called “Golden Slam,”  winning all four Grand Slam singles titles and an Olympic gold medal in the same year. In 2021, Paralympians Diede de Groot and Dylan Alcott won their own “Golden Slams.” Most bulldog puppies are delivered via C-section. William Shakespeare’s wife was Anne Hathaway.

Incisor teeth never stop growing in rodents. A so-called “red tide” is  caused by a proliferation of microorganisms like dinoflagellates. Any animal with hooves is known as an ungulate.

After discovering Uranus, William Herschel  was made King George III’s private astronomer. The first Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded  to Wilhelm Röntgen for the discovery of X-rays. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz independently  developed calculus in the 17th century.

Alessandro Volta discovered methane  and built the first electric battery. Norwegian Roald Amundsen led the first  successful expedition to the South Pole. Nellie Bly was a pioneer in the field of  investigative journalism for her work going undercover at a New York City insane asylum.

ABBA and Celine Dion both won the Eurovision song contest. It was said that the politician Cato the Elder eventually took to ending any statement he made  in the Roman Senate, no matter the topic, with the pronouncement, “Carthage must be destroyed.” The peak of Ecuador’s Mount Chimborazo is the farthest point on Earth  from the center of the Earth. The last monarch of the Hapsburg  dynasty was Karl I of Austria.

The Florence-born Catherine de Medici  was the mother of three French kings. The city of St. Petersburg, Russia, was  previously known as Leningrad and Petrograd.

Lyndon Baines Johnson’s  beagles were named Him and Her. Mexican war hero Porfirio Diaz launched  a revolution against Mexico’s president, Benito Juarez, in 1871, demanding, among other  things, that presidents be limited to one term. Diaz eventually served seven  terms as president, himself.

Genghis Khan established freedom  of religion in the Mongol empire. Attila the Hun died the same  night as one of his weddings. Catherine the Great’s birth name was Sophie  Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst.

Princess Alexandra of Bavaria believed she had  swallowed a glass piano as a child, and went about her life carefully so as to avoid shattering it. 17th century British diarist Samuel Pepys kept a   “tame lion” that had been given to him as a gift. To minimize demands on labor during World War I, Woodrow Wilson had sheep graze on the White  House lawn instead of having humans mow it. Comedian Dana Gould hosts a web-show as  Doctor Zaius from Planet of the Apes.

During the Meiji Restoration, the samurai class  disappeared in Japan; many former samurai took on civil servant or teaching jobs, instead. Simon Bolivar helped Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia all  achieve independence from Spain. During Japan’s Edo Period, women would  blacken their teeth around the time of their wedding and shave their eyebrows  after giving birth to their first child.

Nancy Astor was born in  Virginia and became the first woman to take office in the British parliament. Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy. The T in Booker T.

Washington  stands for Taliaferro. According to the Roman historian Suetonius, the  Emperor Claudius was bullied before rising to power; people would throw olive and date pits  at him if he fell asleep after dinner, and would sometimes put slippers on his hands while  he slept, hoping he’d rub his face with them. It took around two million years for the  population of humans on Earth to hit 1 billion.

The next billion happened in about 120 years. We’re now on pace for an additional billion every 12 years. When the Turco-Mongol leader Tamerlane was trying to invade Delhi, the Sultan  equipped elephants with chain mail for protection;  Tamerlane put hay on his camels’ backs, set  the hay on fire, and forced the camels towards the elephants, who ran away from the danger,  stampeding their own troops in the process.

The first woman to serve in the United  States Senate was Rebecca Felton, but the first woman to be elected Senator  in the United States was Hattie Caraway.  (above as 2 facts) FDR’s son Elliott wrote more than 20 mystery novels, with many  featuring his mother Eleanor as the detective. In 1795, Poland was temporarily  partitioned out of existence. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention,  progressive delegates tried to nominate Julian Bond for Vice President of the United States even  though he was 7 years below the minimum age for the position, as defined by the Constitution.

In 1977, Bond hosted Saturday Night Live. The man often called the liberator of  Chile was named Bernardo O’Higgins. The easternmost and westernmost places belonging  to the United States are both called Point Udall.

England and Scotland were united as a single  state in 1707 under the Stuart Queen Anne. North Korea recognizes Kim Il-sung and  Kim Jong-il as its eternal leaders;  Since both men are dead, some consider  North Korea the world’s only necrocracy. The court jai alai is played  on is known as a fronton;  The basket you catch and throw  the ball with is known as a cesta.

J and Q are the only letters that don’t appear in the symbols or names of any  elements on the periodic table. Ganymede, the largest moon in the  solar system, is bigger than Mercury. The first American to win the Nobel  Prize for Literature was Sinclair Lewis.

Toni Morrison was 39 years old  when her first novel was published. The writer George Sand and the composer Frederic  Chopin had a years-long romantic relationship. Leo Tolstoy’s descendants celebrate a biannual  family reunion at his House-Museum in Russia.

Pamphleteer Thomas Paine was an aide-de-camp  to Revolutionary War General Nathanael Greene. Robert E. Lee’s dad was  nicknamed Light-Horse Harry.

Today, the letter H in the American  military alphabet is Hotel;  At various points in the past  it was how, hypo, and have. The white stork is the national bird of Ukraine. For the first thirty-plus years of television broadcasting in India, there  was only one channel available.

There’s an island made of recycled  mollusk shells off the coast of Senegal. Forty percent of the world’s pepper  production happens in Vietnam. In the Ethiopian calendar,  a year comprises 13 months.

Every year on August 20th, thousands of  Hungarians create a procession alongside the millennium-old embalmed  right hand of King Stephen I. Belarus is the largest  landlocked country in Europe. One of Charles de Gaulle’s  nicknames was “The Great Asparagus.”  Richard Wagner married Franz Liszt’s  illegitimate daughter, Cosima.

Dilma Rousseff was the first woman  to become President of Brazil. During World War II, future Egyptian president  Anwar Sadat escaped from a British prison. Years after his assassination in 1981, three  of the men convicted for involvement in Sadat’s murder briefly escaped prison themselves.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase’s nickname was Old Bacon Face. Drop your favorite random fact in the comments below. No context  allowed!

And thanks for watching.