Five Random Facts for Friday

Here are some random facts for you . . .

1.  There’s a statue at Harvard University that says “John Harvard, Founder, 1638.”  All of that’s wrong.  John Harvard was a benefactor, not the founder.  Harvard was founded in 1636.  And the statue is actually of a man named Sherman Hoar.

2.  Jenga means “to build” in Swahili.  The woman who invented the game was born in Ghana and came up with it when she lived there . . . and she wouldn’t let Hasbro change the name when they bought it from her.

3.  The guy who created Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was friends with Harry Houdini.  But they wound up hating each other after a fight over whether Houdini had magical powers.  Houdini swore he DIDN’T . . . Doyle was sure that he DID.

4.  There are eight Hawaiian islands, but you can’t visit two of them.  One is a nature reserve that used to be a military test site, and one is privately owned by a family that rarely allows visitors.  (Their names are Kahoolawe and Niihau.)

5.  Pizza Hut uses 3% of all the cheese produced in the U.S.

(Campus Sherpa / Kotaku / Wikipedia / Mental Floss / Dairy Herd)