Sunday, July 12, 2015

Passing by oddities

  • When the mummified Ramses II was flown to Paris in 1974, he was issued an Egyptian passport that listed his occupation as “King (deceased).”
  • If you're born on an international flight, your place of birth is listed as 'born at sea' on your passport.
  • You aren't allowed smile in a passport photo because it hinders face recognition software used in airport cameras.
  • Jogging is illegal in the city of Bujumbura (capital of Burundi). Twenty-one people have been sentenced for life in prison for doing so.
  • Queen Elizabeth doesn't need a passport, as all British passports are issued in her name; she just has to say that she's the queen.
  • It is legal to take pictures of people in public places in the US while the same practice is outlawed in Japan. Also, it's illegal to be fat in Japan!
  • Back from the Moon, Apollo astronauts had to go through customs and declare moon rock as cargo.
  • If you want KFC in Gaza, you can pay a company $30 to smuggle it through tunnels across the Egypt/Gaza border within 3 hours.
  • It is illegal for children in Tokyo to make noise when playing — the legal decibel level city-wide is the same as a library's.
  • Google maps show country borders differently depending on which country you are in.
  • When you walk into a room and you forget why you walked in there in the first place is the phenomenon known as "event boundary."
  • Up until 2015, it was illegal to cheat on your spouse in South Korea and the crime was punishable with up to two years in prison.
  • Men in India receive a free gun license if they get a vasectomy.
  • Before the assassination of President Kennedy, it was not a Federal offense to kill the President or Vice President of the United States!
These are some of the gems i came across over the past year thanks to FactlyIO and this is just a drop in the ocean of ignorance that drives us as a species. We know so little about ourselves that it's no surprise that we'll continue to bask in absurdity. And thank darkness for that!

No comments: