Begun in 1929, the Academy Awards and its iconic Oscar statues have become a high-water mark in terms of pagentry and the movies they honor. True, the awards are sometimes overshadowed by the films they snub, but the event continues to hold international attention and has given out 2,809 Oscars for 1,853 in the intervening 83 ceremonies. In that time, the event has picked up some pretty interesting stats and facts, which we’ve chronicled for your pleasure.

In case you had forgotten, NASA has extended its search for new astronauts online in recent years, giving anyone the chance to apply for what is probably the coolest job on the planet. Hopefully you didn’t forget to turn in your application, because the NASA won’t be taking anymore for a while. However, the space agency repots that it was a banner year, boasting the most applications since 1978. So if you did remember to apply, you’re going to have a lot of competition.

Wikipedia’s innumerable lists is already the stuff of legends. And yet still amidst the back alleys, we hear whispers of lists of lists — strange, higher planes of existence which float above everything. But it has transpired that there is still another level; a greater plateau of enlightenment. Friends, believe me when I say that Wikipedia has a List of Lists of Lists. And, most beautifully, it not only links to a list of lists, but also to itself. This, dear readers, is the information singularity. Wikipedia has attained nirvana

Taking a cue from jaded high school students and most college students, it turns out the Gmail logo was designed the night before Gmail launched. According to a post on Quora, Google designer from 2003 to 2008 Kevin Fox said that Gmail logo designer Dennis Hwang was up designing the logo literally the night before the product launched.

After coming out and supporting SOPA, domain registrar GoDaddy caught a lot of flak. After catching said flak and “reversing” their stance, they are still catching a lot of flak. That being the case, there are all kinds of little apps popping up to help you increase the amounts of flak, one of which is ByeDaddy.org, which makes it trivially easy to see who has a domain with GoDaddy. It’s worth nothing that the cleverer, more intuitive, but creepily-named domain, StopDaddy.org actually redirects to GoDaddy’s homepage. Looks like they saw that one coming.

You passed Kindergarten so you probably think you know the noises that animals make, right? Well you don’t. Turns out that baby rhinos make a very distinct noise, one that you probably wouldn’t expect. A high rated YouTube comment likens the noise the rhinos make to the way Charlie the Unicorn‘s “friends” talk, which is as apt a description as I think is possible. But you don’t have to take my word for it. See for yourself.

What are thought to be the world’s oldest human beds were recently found in a cave in South Africa. Considering how primitive they were, perhaps the better term would be “sleeping mats,” but in either case, these are the oldest beds or sleeping mats that have ever been found. Previous sleeping mats dated back 20,000 or 30,000 years, but these new ones — or rather, these old ones — are more squarely in a 50,000 to 70,000 year old ballpark.

It seems Android isn’t the only one with silly, silly code names for their mobile operating system versions. Apple has them too; they just don’t throw them around as much as Android does. Maybe it’s a matter of professionalism or maybe its because, I hate to say it, their iOS code names are kind of lame. I’m not going to say there aren’t righteous ones like “Hoodoo” and, well, “Hoodoo,” but “Sugar Bowl” kind of sounds like a rip-off, and “Heavenly”? That’s a little overconfident, don’t you think?

Full list of code names and the iOS versions they rep after the jump.

Total Recall, though somewhat of sci-fi classic and still fun to watch in 2011, is kind of ridiculous. The movie had a thing for weird faces — people rolling down the Mars wilderness with their eyes bugging out of their heads, Arnold unnaturally stretching his face by pulling a huge light out of his nose, a face attached to a dude’s body, and Arnold screaming all over the place, resulting in gems like the one seen above. The movie is pretty silly, and that seemed to carry over to Arnold’s DVD commentary. YouTube user buzzclikverifyme posted a highlight reel of said DVD commentary, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is either ridiculous, or one of the greatest trolls in the history of film.

Head on past the jump to subject your ears to a very, very literal DVD audio commentary.

A recent adorable video featuring a few marching band members and a line of following geese has been making the rounds on the Internet, but it turns out this isn’t a rare occurrence. In fact, if the frequency of marching band geese videos appearing on YouTube is any indication, if our entire world is anything, it is marching bands and geese. What began as a 36 second video ended up as a very, very long detour across YouTube, full of geese and whistles and big silly hats. Head on past the break to dive into the deep, deep abyss of marching band geese.