Page 284 - Celebrity Facts

A man was shot during a showing of "Black Swan" for complaining about a fellow patron's loud popcorn chewing.

A 43-year-old man in Latvia was unable to enjoy the film due to a nearby moviegoer munching too loudly on his popcorn. The disruptive popcorn-eater, a 27-year-old police academy graduate armed with a doctorate of law from the University of Latvia and a legally registered firearm, took offense to claims that his eating was too loud, waited until the movie was over, and gunned down the 43-year-old, killing him.
Read the full story here.

This story, along with the one about the guy who was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer for complaining about a loud cellphone user, are reason enough for me to not want to go to the movies.

The South African national anthem incorporates five different languages.

The lyrics to "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica" are written in the five most widely spoken of the country's eleven official languages: Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans, and English. Prior to South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, the country had two anthems. The first, "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" (The Call of South Africa), had been the country's official anthem since 1957.

The other tune was "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica," a former church hymn. This song was sung as an unofficial anthem of the people in protest and resistance to the apartheid government of the time. Soon after being elected, President Nelson Mandela named the tunes as co-anthems. In 1997, he had the songs adapted into one anthem as a gesture symbolic of a newfound national unity.

You can read the entire anthem (in English!) and listen to it here.
More info.

The 'infinity chili' is the new hottest chili pepper in the world, and it was grown by accident.

The pepper was inadvertently created by Nick Woods, a British man who grows for Fire Foods, his family-run chili pepper business. Woods noticed the strange crossbreed growing in his greenhouse one day and decided to taste it, much to his instantaneous regret. The pepper was the hottest thing he had ever tasted - so potent that he felt nauseous and was unable to talk after eating it! Knowing that he had discovered an unusually spicy pepper, he sent it off for lab testing. As it turns out, the "infinity" pepper measured in at 1,257,468 units on the Scofield spiciness scale, over 200,000 units hotter than the previous record holder, the Bhut Jolokia pepper from India!
(Source: 1, 2)

It took 10 years for the Secret Service to track down a counterfeiter of 1 dollar bills.

Oddly enough, this counterfeiter's saving grace was that he only counterfeited one dollar bills, and did so at such a slow rate that he was able to stay under the radar. Despite the fact that his counterfeit bills were so low-quality that some of them even spelled "Washington" wrong ("Wahsington"), this guy was able to stay out of trouble by only producing 40-50 one dollar bills every month, and avoiding making return visits to the same stores.

The Secret Service was looking for this counterfeiter for 10 years. Ultimately, he was brought down by a bunch of kids who discovered some discarded fake bills near his apartment and were caught using the fake money as toys. As it turns out, the elusive counterfeiter was a 73-year-old retiree who was using the fake bills to make ends meet. He served 4 months in prison for his crimes.

In case you were wondering, in addition to providing security for the President, Vice President and their families, the Secret Services primary responsibilities are investigating fraud and counterfeiting.

Read more about the unusual case of the $1 counterfeiter, "Old Mr. Eighty-Eight".

Eddie Murphy was the first actor to earn $1 million for his first film.

The deal was part of an exclusive contract with Paramount Pictures in which Murphy was signed to do five films and a major concert movie. In return, Murphy was paid a million dollars up front and would also earn 10 percent of the films' total revenue. Another amazing fact: Murphy was only 21 at the time.
(Sources: 1, 2, 3)