1Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi doesn’t stand for anything; it’s a made-up word. IEEE 802.11' didn't have much of a ring to it, and the industry association wanted a catchy name. They came up with wi-fi, and that's what's been used ever since.
2. Viagra can help make flowers stand straight up for a week past their natural lifespan.
3. The famous Mexican legend Zorro was actually an Irishman called William Lamport.
4. The first online transaction was weed bought by Stanford students from MIT students in 1971 or 1972. The deal occurred over the ARPANET, a precursor to the modern internet which was meant for students to use to communicate with other universities.
5. Norway has won the most gold medals in Winter Olympic history and is the only nation to have at least 100 medals of each gold, silver, and bronze.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Tokelau’s electricity
The tiny island country of Tokelau’s electricity is generated entirely by solar power. However, when it is overcast outside, the island runs on generators powered by coconut oil.
7. Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (1884-1955) is credited with having killed between 53 and 70 people. Over his career, he was shot 17 times and left for dead 4 times. He is best known for his lead role in tracking down Bonnie and Clyde.
8. Almost all the stones/rocks used in the sport of 'Curling' is from the small uninhabited Scottish island of Ailsa Craig. The only other source of the stone is a quarry in Wales.
9. There is a village in China named Huangfeng village that publishes the names of those who neglect their elderly parents as a means of shaming those people.
10. The painting of George Washington used for the dollar bill was never finished.
11LUECKE
A cattle farmer, while clearing land on his Texas ranch, wrote his name (LUECKE) in letters that were 1 kilometer in length, producing the world’s largest signature. It lies on major flight paths into Houston and NASA uses it to evaluate satellite imagery.
12. Kevin Peter Hall, the actor who played the Predator (1987), was involved in a near-fatal car accident in 1990. While receiving a blood transfusion at the hospital, he contracted AIDS and died less than a year later.
13. In one variation of the Milgram experiment, subjects were directed to shock a "cute, fluffy puppy" instead of a human. Only half of the male subjects and all of the female subjects obeyed the orders.
14. The US Postal Service banned the mailing of people in 1914 after a 4-year-old was sent by her parents across the state of Idaho for 53¢.
15. On July 17, 1955, within a week of Disneyland opening, operator error resulted in the caboose of the Disneyland Railroad crashing and derailing. During the ensuing commotion, the brakeman at fault "quietly left the scene of the accident, exited the park, and was not seen again".
16Apollo 11 flag
The Flag that Apollo 11 astronauts planted on the moon was bought for $5.50 at Sears.
17. German long jumper "Luz" Long gave Jesse Owens advice allowing him to win gold at 1936 Berlin Olympics. Long won silver. During the war, Long asked Jesse to tell his son "what times were like when we were not at war... how things can be between men on this earth", before being killed in 1943.
18. Theodore Roosevelt was shot before a speech in Milwaukee and refused to have medical treatment until he delivered his 90-minute speech, in which he showed off the bullet wound to the crowd.
19. Because in 1971, 15% of American soldiers in Vietnam were heroin addicts, the government started operation Golden Flow which required soldiers to pass a drug test in order to return home.
20. Skyscrapers are designed to last at least 500 years on average and are engineered to withstand catastrophic weather events occurring once every 50 years.
21Hum
There is a mysterious "hum" in parts of the world that only certain members of the population can hear.
22. New Zealand adventurer Chloe Phillips-Harris was denied access to Kazakhstan in 2016 under the guise that New Zealand did not exist because the map in the detention room did not include it.
23. When teens are taught that people have the potential to change their socially relevant traits over time, they tend to cope better with social stress and end up earning better grades in school.
24. Modern studies do not show any association between saturated fat and a higher risk of death for any reason (cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, etc.) but they do show up to a 34% increase in death associated with unsaturated industrial plant oil-based fats such as margarine.
25. Following the 2010 Olympics, a sled dog tour company based out of Whistler (British Columbia, Canada) sought a veterinarian to euthanize 56 dogs because of a downturn in business. When the vet refused to kill healthy animals, an employee named Robert Fawcett shot them “execution-style” or slit their throats.
