Day 3.

How about some more random pop culture facts?


1) Elvis once wrote a letter to President Nixon asking to become an undercover narcotics cop. Nixon responded by personally giving Elvis a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge. During Elvis’s autopsy, doctors found 10 different drugs in Elvis’s blood stream.

At least there were good intentions?

2) Soccer balls were originally painted with the now classic black and white checkered look in order to make them more visible on black and white TV during the 1970 FIFA World Cup.  Naturally, people wanted to buy balls that looked like those that the professionals used on TV and thus everybody bought the black and white checkered soccer ball instead of the previous traditional solid color ball.


3) The total number of American deaths during the Civil War were about 292,000 in battle, which was about 2% of the population, and about 625,000 total killed as a result of the war (including those dead of disease and the like, which was a major problem in soldier’s camps).   That is a total of about 4.3% of the U.S population.  By today’s population numbers that would be about 13.32 million Americans. (If you want a better picture of that, according to the 2010 US Census, Pennsylvania has a population of 12.7 million people. All of Pennsylvania - gone, and then some.)

Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War

4) The 1960 movie Psycho is thought to be the first movie where a toilet is shown being flushed.  The momentous flushing took place just before Janet Leigh’s character takes a shower and subsequently gets stabbed to death.

Janet Leigh in Psycho

5) Oreos are considered to be America's favorite store bought cookie. After debuting in 1912 (almost 100 years ago!) Oreo has made over 345 billion cookies since 1912. That is enough cookies to reach to the moon and back 5 times. That is also enough cookies to reach around the earth 381 times.

As a college student, I have personally witnessed thousands of these cookies
being eaten by friends at parties. I am proud to say I am a part of this statistic.