10 Random Facts - March 2021 Edition

1. Eagles have really great vision. 

And by really great I mean four to five times better than human vision. They can have eyes equally as large as ours, and their eyes can sometimes take up almost half of their head. One of the advantages they have on us is that eagles can detect five basic colors, while humans can only detect three. The reason for this is that eagles have one million cones per square millimetre versus our two-hundred thousand. They can also detect some UV light which helps them track their prey by enabling them to see an animals urine trail. In addition to all of this their eyes are also angled thirty degrees away from the center of their face which gives them a large field of view.

2. Coral reefs are home to lots of young marine life.

It's no secret that coral reefs have a lot of useful functions, but one of its functions is acting as a nursery for young species. The reefs are important to all sorts of species for finding food, shelter, mates, and places to reproduce, but to larger fish species it also acts as their babies' first homes before they get big enough to move into the deeper ocean. Another thing that you may or may not know about coral reefs is that although the coral requires photosynthesis to survive it is actually an animal, not a plant, and is in fact related to anemones and jellyfish. If you aren't already in love with coral reefs then I have one more bit of information for you. They are currently being used as sources to develop new medicines to treat everything from arthritis to Alzheimer's disease.

3. There are a lot of misconceptions about Rosa Parks and her most famous moment.

Starting with the fact that she wasn't technically the first Black woman to refuse to give up their seat on a Montgomery bus. The first was actually Claudette Colvin who was followed by Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith, and Susie McDonald before Rosa Parks made her stand in 1955. Another misconception about the incident is that some people think she refused to move because she was tired. Parks shut down this myth in her autobiography, stating that she wasn't any more tired that day after work than any other day. She said "No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

4. Russia has some really cool cats.

Although I'm sure all of the cats in Russia are cool, I'm specifically talking about the cats that reside at the Hermitage museum. Their original purpose at the museum was to keep the rat numbers down therefore keeping the artifacts safe, but now in addition to that they're useful simply because they're almost as well known as some of the artifacts themselves. They live down in the basement of the museum and are taken care of by three of their own caretakers.

5. Marilyn Monroe had a tough childhood.

She spent most of her childhood in and out of various foster homes, and sadly they weren't very nice ones. She did spend some time with her mother off and on but those times weren't always pleasant since her mother suffered from schizophrenia, and was eventually institutionalized when Monroe was just a child. She never knew who her father was, but when she was young she used to think it was Clark Gable because of a picture owned by her mother of a man with a thin mustache. When she was sixteen years old she exited the foster care system by marrying her boyfriend of a few months, Jimmy Dougherty, who was a merchant marine.

6. The movie "Inception" was almost a horror film.

When Christopher Nolan first had the idea for Inception he saw it as a horror film but that idea was dropped during the writing process in order to change it into the heist film we know and love. Nolan came up with the idea for the film while he was working on another one, Insomnia, and actually went around Hollywood pitching it back in 2002. Although a few studios were interested in the idea, Nolan decided to take a few years to write the movie on his own time without having the pressure of a contract.

7. Queen Elizabeth II served in the military.

In 1945 when she was eighteen years old, during World War II, the Queen joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service where she was known as Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor and trained as a mechanic. This job made her the first female full time active member to come from the Royal Family. During her time in the army the Queen learned to drive, and has been seen taking joy rides on her various estates despite not requiring a drivers license. Her car of choice? A Range Rover. The lady has got style.

8. Not all pianos are created equal.

And I don't just mean piano to piano, I mean sometimes two different types of pianos can differ in quality. For instance, the upright piano is actually slower than the grand piano. On a grand piano you can repeat the notes much faster due to a repetition lever that allows the pianist to play the key again when it's only halfway up, whereas on an upright piano you have to wait for the key to go all the way up. But some pianos are just fancy, the most expensive piano in the world sold for 3.22 million at auction. It's known as the Crystal Piano, and was designed by Heintzman Pianos.

9. You really shouldn't go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

I don't know how many of you were planning on doing this but it's a really bad idea. The statistics for it aren't fantastic, at least a dozen people have done it and survived (including the first person to try it, Annie Edson Taylor who was 63 at the time) but numerous people have tried it and perished in the attempt. And not only could the plunge itself be dangerous but stunting at Niagara Falls is illegal and you could be facing anything from fines to jail time. Now there is a species that can go over the Falls and be perfectly fine. Fish almost never die during the plunge, but they are sometimes picked up by a hungry seagull because after the journey they are momentarily "stunned".

10. Harry Styles has a very special nickname.

While it's no secret that the former One Direction star is a sweetheart, you might not know that he got a new nickname after filming the music video for Watermelon Sugar. Two of the starring models in that mv referred to him later as a "consent king" due to him constantly checking in to make sure that they were okay with him touching them for the video. And if that wasn't proof enough that he's a classy guy, in 2016 when he cut his famous hair for his role in Dunkirk he donated it to a charity foundation that makes wigs for kids with cancer.