Fact Dump October 14th, 2012
Fact Dump for October 14th, 2012. Check out 5 random fun facts below:
Simon Pegg’s Hollywood Movie Career
After the success of the British zombie comedy “Shaun of the Dead”, Simon Pegg was asked if he’d like to pursue a movie career in Hollywood. He jokingly responded: “it’s not like I am going to be in Mission Impossible III”. A few years later he scored a role in Mission Impossible III (and the follow up: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol).
The First McDonald’s Drive Thru
The first McDonald’s drive thru was created in 1975 near an Arizona Army base. It was created for soldiers that were not allowed to leave their cars while wearing military fatigues.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyll
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a village on the island of Anglesey in Wales with a population of about 3,000 people. This village has the longest name in Europe and is also one of the longest names in the world. Check out the pronunciation in the Youtube video to the right.
Town of 11 People Sells 4 Million Beers a Year
Whiteclay, Nebraska is a small town near the South Dakota border with a population of only 11 people. Despite the towns incredibly small size, it still manages to sell an average of 4 million cans of beer each year. The town has four liquor stores which all get steady business every single day. The customers come from a nearby South Dakota Native American reservation (population 40,000) that struggles with severe alcoholism. The reservation banned alcohol in an attempt to solve the problem, but now they all just crossover into Whiteclay. Several lawsuits have been brought up in an attempt to prevent sales to the residents, but none have succeeded so far.
Kentucky Was Almost Called Transylvania
The Transylvania Colony was a proposed colony founded in 1775 by Richard Henderson, who at the time, controlled the North Carolina based Transylvania Company. Henderson planned to purchase 20 million acres (about half the size of present day Kentucky) and create a British propriety colony. However, in 1776 the Virginia General Assembly invalidated the deal and Transylvania ceased to exist. So instead of a state which I can only imagine would today be filled vampires and sweet Dracula castles, is now just boring old Kentucky.
