Picasso's full name was 23 words long.
Picasso is one of the most famous names in the art world. But it turns out his real name was actually a little longer than what we're used to hearing. In fact, it was a lot longer. The painter's full name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso.
Charles Darwin frequently ate the animals he studied.
Speaking of eating odd animals, the "Father of Evolution," Charles Darwin, always had a taste for unusual cuisine—he was even a member of The Glutton Club while a student at Cambridge University. And according to io9, "He ate the iguanas he studied on the Galapagos. He ate armadillo, which he claimed tasted like duck. He ate puma. The lesser rhea, known to scientists as Rhea darwinii, got its name because Darwin sent the few bits of it he hadn't eaten to London." According to Foodbeast, the scientist had been enjoying the large flightless rhea bird for Christmas dinner.
"J" is the only letter that doesn't appear on the periodic table.
If you run through the list of elements found on the periodic table—hydrogen, helium, oxygen, magnesium, titanium, copper, and all of the others—there's only one letter missing: "J." (That is unless you're looking at a periodic table from countries like Norway, Poland, Sweden, Serbia, or Croatia, which use the name "jod" for iodine.)
Crows can recognize individual human faces and hold grudges.
It's probably best not to get on a crow's bad side. According to one 2008 study by wildlife researchers at the University of Washington—plus tons of anecdotal evidence from wildlife biologists—the highly intelligent birds are capable of remembering individual human faces, even if those who have wronged them wear a disguise. So how do crows show their distaste? They scream. "The birds were really raucous, screaming persistently," one volunteer in the crow study told The New York Times. "And it was clear they weren't upset about something in general. They were upset with me." Sounds intense!
Violet Jessop survived three of the largest ship disasters in history.
Violet Jessop may be one of the luckiest or unluckiest women in history, depending on how you look at it. The ocean liner stewardess not only survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, but she was also present during the Olympic ship collision in 1911 and on board during the sinking of the Britannic in 1916 (Olympic and Britannic were Titanic's sister ships). Miraculously, none of the disasters could take Jessop down and she lived to be 83, passing away in 1971.
More than half of Shakespeare's characters die in the same way.
William Shakespeare had a flair for the dramatic, but he also relied on some tried and true tropes, including the ways he killed off his characters. When The Guardian broke down data from Open Source Shakespeare in 2016, they found that the majority of fatalities (54 out of the 100 deaths in all of his plays) were due to stabbings. The second most common cause of death was being poisoned, although just four characters met their maker this way. And for even more odd trivia, check out the 100 Random Facts That Will Simply Astonish You.
There's a person buried on the moon.
There's only one human who's made the moon their final resting place. Eugene Shoemaker was considered one of the founders of planetary science and after a career filled with stellar accomplishments, he spent his days traveling around the world to study impact craters. When he passed away in 1997 during one of his trips, his wife, Carolyn, who had once discovered a comet with her husband, sent his ashes to the moon in a metal cylinder that was inscribed with a quote from Romeo and Juliet: "And, when he shall die/Take him and cut him out in little stars/And he will make the face of heaven so fine/That all the world will be in love with night/And pay no worship to the garish sun."
IKEA
is an acronym which stands for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.
In 1943, Ingvar Kamprad, who was 17-years-old at the time, was given money from his father as a reward for doing well with his schoolwork. With his earnings, the teen decided to start his own business. To name it, he used his own two initials (I and K) as well as the first letters of the name of the farm and village where he grew up, Elmtaryd (E) and Agunnaryd (A). Put them all together and you have IKEA.
LEGO translates to "play well" in Danish.
There are multiple versions of the Mona Lisa.
The Mona Lisa may be the most famous painting in the world, but she's not actually an original. There are multiple copies of the Mona Lisa all thought to be painted by Leonardo da Vinci, though some may have been made by his students who were attempting to copy their master's work as practice. Along with the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, there's also the Isleworth Mona Lisa, the Prado Museum La Gioconda Mona Lisa, the Hermitage Mona Lisa, Salaì's Mona Lisa, and even a nude version. Oh my!
