Page 62 - Other Facts

Switzerland has an Anti-PowerPoint political party!

There’s a political party in Switzerland that actually works to decrease the number of PowerPoints used in professional presentations! The Anti-PowerPoint Party or APPP is a Swiss political party founded in 2011. They’re dedicated to decreasing the professional use of Microsoft PowerPoint and other presentation software.

The party claims that using these software causes national-economic damage of about $2.1 billion CHF. It also lowers the quality of a presentation in 95 percent of the cases. Their advocated alternative is flip charts. The Anti-PowerPoint Party was founded by former software engineer Matthias Poehm in Switzerland.

The goal of the party is to be the fourth largest political party in Switzerland in terms of its membership, and to ban PowerPoint, let’s not forget. Their slogan is “Finally do something!”

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The 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville only turned a profit of about $57.

The 1982 World’s Fair, aka: the Knoxville International Energy Exposition, drew in over 11 million visitors from all around the world; Belgium, Canada, Egypt, Greece, Italy, etc. The fair was constructed on a 70-acre site between downtown Knoxville and the University of Tennessee. It’s theme was “Energy Turns the World.” The fair was one of the most popular world’s fair in US history.

It managed to real in a whooping $57- which is still a profit, but falls a little bit short of the projected $5 million surplus.

Now this can be attributed to a few things; some say that the tickets for the fair were priced to low- a six-month pass sold for only $100, others say that the inability of local hotels and other accommodations to take reservations directly did not encourage repeat business.

But on the bright side, a real life (or rather, dead) mummy was unwrapped and studied at the fair...that’s good, right?

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Google has its own dinosaur!

Google is known for having strange, and often revolutionary, aspects of the company that leave many people left scratching their head as to what the purpose is. One thing that would surely fall into that category would be their pet dinosaur, Stan. Stan is a T-Rex skeleton that was found near the Google headquarters.

The skeleton was discovered and unearthed before being affirmed that it was authentic. Today it stands outside of Building 43 at the Googleplex. However, while we know they did in fact discover a skeleton, whether this is the actual T-Rex or just a model of the bones is still in dispute.

One thing that is apparent is that Google will continue to do things a little out of the ordinary, and as long as they’re still stunningly successful, most will overlook the more quirky aspects such as a pet dinosaur.

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'The Mummy' was so successful that the morning after it was released Universal Studios phoned the director and said 'we need another one.'

It’s funny to think that this was said about a franchise that would produce such an underwhelming third installment. Still, the franchise grossed a lot of money and even has (brace yourself) a darker, grittier reboot coming. Some other interesting tidbits about the movie follow.

• During one scene involving a noose, the noose around Brendan Fraser’s neck was so tight that he passed out.
• The library disaster scene was all done in one take.
• The white gown Evelyn was wearing in one scene got so wet that it became transparent and had to be painted over in post production.
• Dog food was dried to simulate hail for one of the scenes.
• A scene involving locusts had several real grasshoppers that were stored in a fridge so that they would be slower to move and easier to film.
• For an unknown reason, all the camels hated Kevin J. O’Connor.
• The “Mummy” referenced in the title of the movie wasn’t actually mummified at any point.

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Brock was replaced in Pokemon because writers thought he was racially offensive!

Following the adventures in the Kanto region in the Pokemon tv series, the main characters had some adventures in a place called The Orange Islands. During that period, Brock (one of the three main characters) was replaced by a character named Tracy. When Ash left the Orange Islands, Tracy was replaced by Brock in turn.

Fans had speculated about why this happened for a long time. In an interview, the director and storyboard artists, Masamitsu Hidaka, explained what happened. Hidaka said that the team behind Pokemon realized it was going global, and that people in America would view Brock as a racist stereotype because of his eyes.

To err on the side of caution, they created Tracy, a caucasian, to avoid any controversy. Eventually the writers realized that Brock hadn't offended anyone, so they wrote him back in.

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