Dylancholy's Submissions - Interesting Facts and Fun Facts

Dylancholy submitted this to OMG Facts

In 1976 there was a wine contest in Paris where Californian wines beat French ones. The reporter covering the event was blacklisted for reporting it.

It’s indeed a funny idea, the French losing at wine to Californians. But if you know much about Cali, then you know that the Napa Valley wine is a pretty big deal. Though not as big in 1976, Napa still produced some good wine. During that time was the event known as the Judgment of Paris, when the French lost to the Californians.

So upset were the French that some refused to take the result seriously and the reporter who was relaying the story was blacklisted from ever reporting again. Some even claimed it was an Anglo conspiracy. Today, France is actually producing TOO MUCH wine, resulting in a surplus. Prices are collapsing, and apparently there was so much wine produced in 2005 that 100 million liters of one type alone had to be distilled into ethanol. That’s 133 million bottles of wine.

It’s been estimated that 30 to 50 percent of wineries might be forced out of business there. So grim is the situation that there have been protests and even suicides. Great Britain and the US have had burgeoning wine industries over the last few decades, while France’s have been slowly dwindling.

(Source)

Dylancholy submitted this to OMG Facts

In the US if your dog needs a kidney transplant, you can take one from a stray animal- if you adopt the stray.

Dogs are funny things in the US. Unlike in some other countries, dogs really are part of the family for most US families. So true is this that people really consider kidney transplants for their beloved animals.

An ethical dilemma then arises: why should a healthy dog lose a kidney? If someone were to take a kidney from an ownerless dog, the dog would need to be euthanized. The solution? A transplant isn’t done unless the donor agrees to adopt the animal that gives up his or her kidney.

This is so that two lives are saved instead of one life being purchased through another’s death. Of course this only covers kidney transplants. There are other ethical dilemmas in heart transplants for example. On one hand, taking the organs from a stray that is about to be euthanized seems like nothing worth fussing over, but some feel that because the animal can’t exactly give consent, it isn’t fair to kill him or her in a healthy state just for his or her organs.

(Source)

Dylancholy submitted this to OMG Facts

Robert Downey Jr. claims Burger King saved his life from his drug addiction.

If you’ve seen Iron Man enough, you might have caught the Burger King product placement. While product placement isn’t exactly a rarity anymore (in fact, it’s only going to increase in movies in the coming years), the deal to have Burger King in Iron Man was actually spawned because of how it saved Robert Downey Jr.’s life.

According to RDJ, in 2003 he was driving a car full of drugs when he decided to go grab a burger. The burger he had was, apparently, exceptionally disgusting. So repulsive was the burger that he thought something really bad was going to happen.

It made him rethink where his life was going, and so he drove down to the ocean and threw all the drugs that were in his car into it. From that point forward, he started recovering from his drug use. Of course for Burger King it’s a bit of a double edged sword, because though it’s advertisement by a celebrity, a “horrible burger” doesn’t really resonate that well with people.

(Source)

Dylancholy submitted this to OMG Facts

An anti-date rape straw has been invented in Israel.

Date rape drugs, for those who don’t know, are any drugs that can render someone unconscious, generally those that can be dissolved in liquid and for the intention of nonconsensual sex. A straw has been developed in Israel by Fernando Patolsky and Michal Ioffe that attempts to combat this.

Currently, the straw can detect the two most popular date rape drugs, and in time it will be further developed to detect more types of drugs. The straw is fast acting and reusable. Right now, the inventors are looking for people to invest in its development so that it can be cheaply mass-produced to help combat the frequency of date rape.

The straw works by mixing a tiny sample of the drink with a testing solution that causes a chemical reaction. If there’s a date rape drug in the drink, the drink becomes cloudy or colored. With any luck, this will become a very popular and very available device. Hopefully, it can make a noticeable change to the fact that one in six women will be sexually assaulted.

(Source)

Dylancholy submitted this to OMG Facts

Prince took down a YouTube video of his live cover of Radiohead's 'Creep,' for copyright infringement. Radiohead's response? "Unblock it, it's our song."

It’s a pretty nice display of respect between musicians and respect of music. In today’s world of copyright insanity, where great music like Rebecca Black’s Friday can be removed from YouTube due to ownership claims, it’s great to see musicians treating their music in such a way.

So when Prince’s rendition of Creep went up on YouTube, it was quickly removed due to his label, NPG Records, claiming a copyright violation. Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, however had heard about the performance and thought much of it.

He laughed when he found out that not even he could hear Prince’s rendition of his own song. Yorke responded by getting the video unblocked, because the song is really Radiohead’s anyway. While Google declined to comment, the video was shortly put back up. You can now view it in all its glory below. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZayY_6xv7I

(Source)