Page 87 - Other Facts

Canada is implementing a new glow in the dark quarter with a dinosaur on it!

Sound strange? In a series of several new currency alterations, Canada has decided to remove their penny from circulation while also implementing a new glow in the dark quarter with a dinosaur on it! While this sounds like a completely random move, it actually has some significance. 

Canada decided to mint this coin with a dinosaur on it because the Pachyrhinosaurus lacustai, which is the creature depicted, was the first dinosaur found in the Alberta region, which led to the discovery of a plethora of other dinosaur remains. To make the coin even more alluring scientists added a new design that is infused with a photo-luminescent element that allows the dinosaur’s skeleton to glow in the dark!

If you plan on acquiring one of these coins we suggest you do it quickly because only 25,000 will be minted and will cost around 30 dollars each!

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Serial killer Richard Chase attempted to enter the home of a woman but, finding that her doors were locked, walked away because it made him feel like he wasn’t welcome.

Richard Chase was a schizophrenic serial killer from Sacramento, California. He was nicknamed the Vampire of Sacramento because drank the blood of his victims and ate them. He killed six people all within one month. The first murder was on 29, 1977, which he committed by drive by shooting. Two weeks after, he tried to get into a woman’s house, but he found her doors were locked, so he walked away. 

He told detectives later that he took locked doors as a sign that he wasn’t welcome. On the contrary, unlocked doors were an invitation to come inside according to him. His next victim was Teresa Wallin, who was three months pregnant. Four days after her, Chase murdered four people all in one house before eating some of the corpses. 

He was caught on that murder and was sentenced to die by gas chamber (in California, gas chamber execution is a rarely used secondary method of execution). On December 26, 1980, while Chase was on death row, he committed suicide. 

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Over the years scientists have found incredibly well preserved corpses dating back to the Iron Age!

These are called “bog bodies” and they’re so alive-looking that they’re sometimes even called “bog people.” They’re found in the sphagnum bogs in Northern Europe and unlike most ancient human remains, they’ve retained their external and internal organs. The conditions that allow this to happen include highly acidic water, low temperatures, and a lack of oxygen. 

The bog bodies’ skin however, is severely tanned and their bones have lost much of their calcium phosphate. The German scientist Dr. Alfred Dieck discovered over 1,850 of these Bog Bodies in 1965 but many cannot be verified by documents or archeological finds. In fact, there’s an entire article in the German archeology journal claiming that some of the cases were false. 

Dieck thought that the bodies were of the first victims of human sacrifice in Iron Age Germanic paganism, while others think that “bogging” was a form of capital punishment in 1st century Germania. Either way it’s interesting, that in a sense, these people are immortalized after their deaths. 

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Certs mints invented an ingredient called "Retsyn" just so that they could market themselves as "the only mints with Retsyn."

Certs mint’s trademark slogan “the only mints with Retsyn,” sure does sell. But what exactly does it mean? Why exactly is “Retsyn” so amazing? The answer to that is; it actually isn’t. According to the Certs Cool Mint Drops Page, Retsyn is a combination of partially hydrogenated cottonseed, cooper gluconate, and flavouring. Aka: oil, copper sugar, and a vague but unremarkable chemical. 

But while Retsyn itself isn’t amazing, its story sure is. The ingredient (if it can even be called that) was created by Certs mints as a marketing scheme. It was meant to give them a competative edge by making it appear as though they had something no one else did. The most astonishing thing is that it worked! For a long time, Certs has been considered “America’s most popular mint”...which come to think of it would be a more catchy and honest slogan. 

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There are vacuum-driven garbage collection systems in parts of New York City that literally suck trash through pipes under the streets!

Whenever people in NYC throw their garbage down the trash chutes, it piles up for a few hours, until a trap door suddenly opens and sucks the waste into a huge underground pipe. The garbage is propelled through the pipe at a speed of sixty miles per hour. It sounds like the stuff of sci-fi “future” movies, but this has been going on for nearly 35 years, and is named the Avac system after the Swedish company that runs it. After a lengthy journey, the trash comes to a stop at a central disposal system known as the Avac center. 

It is dumped into two silo-shaped cyclones, and then spun into huge containers. On a normal day, five to seven tons of garbage is “pulled” in. But New York City’s constant growth demands Avac’s constant expansion. There have been suggestions to install the system outside, so litter can be collected from the city’s streets. But the people who run the Avac system and center have replied with; “Yeah, but God knows what would show up then.” 

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