Obscure facts ya know!

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The little girl was tortured and sexually abused in that basement...some dreadful autopsy photos are online, if you can stand it.

If she had been hit once, and died from her head hitting the floor or wall, I could believe that a parent did it, but not all that was done to that child.

I never understood why her body was left in the house.....she was little, a small body could be buried or dumped in the Colorado wilderness, and never found.

I also never understood the way the local police handled the investigation.

Bubble wrap was originally supposed to be sold as wallpaper. In 1957, engineers made a textured wallpaper by sealing two air-filled shower curtains together, but nobody wanted to buy it. Several years later they realized it would make great packing material, and now $400 million worth is sold annually.

In the Andromeda strain movie, they actually deprived a Reese monkey of oxygen till it passed out to get the effect of it dying of a disease. Fortunately the director then ran on directly after the shot with an oxygen mask to revive it. It was really disturbing to watch.

the first stereophonic music recordings were made in the early '30s by leo Stokowski and the Philadelphia orchestra at the Philadelphia academy of music building. the recording equipment took up much of the basement of that building. the sound quality was "high-fidelity" for its day and the techniques learned and refined there formed the basis for the "fantasound" that engineer bill garity used for the multichannel sountrack of the Disney movie "Fantasia" a decade later.

Mickey Mouse was originally named 'Mortimer' by Walt Disney.

His wife suggested 'Mickey'.

And 'Fantasia' did not do well at the box office when first released....

Now, of course, it is recognized as a cinematic classic.

fantasia has the longest interval between a movie and its sequel [60 years].

Slightly incorrect

Our jaws shrunk because our ancestors were using tools to do tasks that once required teeth..and tools significantly expanded their diet. Things like cracking nuts open, grinding food before chewing, better access to meat/protein sources..all these things, over time, made jaws not require such strong muscles and thus no need for large muscle attachments to the skull (attachments are found on the top of the skull and the very back and front of the cranium). When those muscles became smaller, the cranium had space to expand and by doing that, also increased the size of the brain (which fueled further use of tools, further better nutrition and less use of the teeth which led to the near complete receding of the 'snout' on our ancestors which in turn increased further the space available for the brain and the loop began again).

Wisdom teeth are the leftoever from when we had snouts so that is accurate.

My obscure fact:

A man fighting on the side of the british during the revolutionary war once had a clear shot at george washington from a position of cover and ambush (aka sniper shot)..but he did not because, as he explained to his commanding officer later,

"...it was not pleasant to fire at the back of an unoffending individual, who was acquitting himself very coolly of his duty—so I let him alone."

I wonder if that failed sniper was himself put in front of a firing squad, subsequent to this admission?

George Washington, when president, wanted to be addressed as 'Your Highness'.

the first American movie to be given an "adults-only" certificate, was "miracle of morgan's creek" in 1943. this meant that all theatres in that studio's chain [paramount] were legally obligated to restrict the viewing audience to people 18 and over.

Betty Hutton, star of 'Miracle Of Morgan's Creek' was once Hollywood's biggest musical star, and did T.V. And Broadway, AND records.

Her father walked out on the family when she was very young, her mother sold illegal liquor to support them, and Betty wound up divorced four times and estranged from her three daughters.

She had become addicted to pills, lost her career and fortune, did at least one suicide attempt.

She met a Catholic priest while in rehab, and found a faith that turned her life around.

She became a Catholic, went back to school, got a college degree.

Unfortunately, though she moved back to California to re-connect with her daughters, the relationships did not happen.

When she died of cancer, not one of her children attended her funeral.

the reasons that early moviemakers went from 18 frames per second, to 24-

*easier editing, much greater divisibility @24 frames-
*the 19 inches per second registration speed @ 24 frames was just enough for speech intelligibility in the very earliest optical sound tracks.

When Steve Jobs was dying, he had been looking at his family, gathered around his bed, then suddenly gazed past them and said his last words, “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”

sorta like what happened to my dad when he passed, in front of witnesses.

Bacteria can share their DNA with other bacteria.
A virus is not considered a "living thing".