100 Interesting Facts About Canada

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Canada declared war on Japan before the United States did.

27. The man that shot the attacker at Canadian Parliament in 2014, Sgt-At-Arms Kevin Vickers, did so by diving through a doorway, flipping around to face upwards, and firing at the shooter while still in mid-air. He is reported to have said, "I put him down".

28. 4 skateboarders in Calgary stepped in to save a woman being sexually assaulted. They scared off the assailant, then chased him down and held him until police arrested him.

29. A motorcycle swept away by the Japanese tsunami washed up on the shore in Canada, the owner was identified and the motorcycle was returned.

30. Canada has a free 24-hour phone number for any medical questions that anyone can call if they're not sure they should see a doctor

HitchBOT, a robot designed to rely on humans to get from place to place. It successfully hitched rides across Canada and Germany before attempting to thumb its way from Boston to San Francisco. The experiment ended in Philadelphia when vandals left HitchBOT decapitated on a street corner.

32. After a 1942 shipwreck off Newfoundland, locals having never seen blacks before tried to scrub clean those survivors thinking they were covered in oil

33. In Churchill, Canada many locals leave their cars unlocked in case someone needs to make a quick escape from a polar bear.

34. A man in Calgary rescued a baby from a dumpster and later found out he was the father

35. The Largest Nuclear Power Plant (Bruce Nuclear Generating Station) in the world is in Ontario, Canada and that their security force has won the U.S. National SWAT Championship four times.

Nunavut has the lowest graduation rate in Canada and a student from Qikiqtarjuaq became the first high schooler to graduate in four years in 2016

37. An asthmatic boy died in a severe asthma attack because the school forbid asthma inhalers; while the boy was dying, the inhalers sat in a safe at the principal's office.

38. Canada has one-fifth of the world’s freshwater.

39. Over 90% of the population of Canada lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

40. In 1966 and 1967, soldiers testing Agent Orange in Canada were told the chemical was completely safe and sprayed it on each other to cool off.

Canada formally awarded Santa Claus official citizenship and gave him his own postal code (H0H 0H0) so children can send him letters

42. Dolly Parton created the Imagination Library, which sends one free book per month to a child, to boost literacy and foster a love of reading. Founded to serve her native Sevier County TN, it now ships over a million books a month to kids in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

43. Canada hands out a 1-year free Cultural Access Pass to new citizens. Free access to 1,000 museums and cultural centers across Canada.

44. When Team Canada's Olympic gold medal-winning goalie Shannon Szabados was invited to take practice with the perennial last-place Edmonton Oilers in the spring of 2014, someone asked her if she was worried about getting hit on by the players. Her response: "Nope, they can't score anyway."

45. Canada forced 150,000 native children into "Residential Schools" away from their families to assimilate them and remove their family's culture. Over 6,000 died and many were physically and sexually abused. Most returned home unable to help, or connect with, their families.

In 2015, a Canadian man named Daniel Bora was arrested after tying more than 100 balloons to a garden chair and flying over the city of Calgary

47. The Rhinoceros Party of Canada, a satirical, federally registered political party in Canada, received 1.01% of the popular vote in the 1980 federal election campaigning to repeal the law of gravity and provide higher education by building taller schools, among other promises.

48. A homeless man in Canada turned in $2000 he found on the street; when a blogger raised over $5000 in donations for the man, he turned it down and wanted it donated to charity instead

49. Members of Westboro Baptist Church have been specifically banned from entering Canada for hate speech.

50. Canada deemed "Third World" in Broadband Internet rating by Netflix.