26Free Train Pass
The European Union offers free train passes to 18-year-olds so that they can explore Europe.
27. “Golden Girl” Bea Arthur enlisted in the Marines in 1943 where she was one of the first members of the Women’s Reserve and spent time as a typist and a truck driver.
28. Despite not being involved with the company for decades, Steve Wozniak remains an employee at Apple and still gets a salary because nobody will fire him.
29. Chocolate was classified as “candy” under the Revenue Acts of 1918 and 1921, and so it was taxed as such. Hershey’s sued to recover about $8 million in taxes by arguing it was “food”, and so had been wrongly taxed. The Supreme Court ruled it was “candy.”
30. When he was a young boy, Yuri Gagarin’s (first man in space) village was occupied by Nazis. They forced his family to work while living in a 3x3 meter mud hut for 21 months. He saw his little brother being hanged (but saved by his parents) and his two older siblings deported for slave labor (who escaped).
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
31Maude Adams
Early-20th-century actress, Maude Adams, wanted to do a film version of Peter Pan but was against doing it in black-and-white. She began working with experts on those obstacles, i.e. lack of color film and inadequate lighting. She earned several electric-light patents in the 1930s.
32. Mesopotamians figured out that the Earth orbited the sun about 1,700 years before Copernicus and Newton. They also figured out that the moon causes the tides and that the Earth rotates around its axis.
33. Christopher Columbus’ efforts to obtain support for his voyages were hampered not by belief in a flat Earth but by valid worries that the East Indies were farther than he realized. In fact, Columbus grossly underestimated the Earth's circumference, which drew him and his crews to near starvation.
34. The Red Delicious Apple wasn’t always terrible. The 1880s original was apparently delicious, but slowly was selected for color and looks over taste.
35. Dr. John Snow discovered that cholera spread through water and not air. He discovered this during an outbreak in London in 1854 during which time hundreds of people became infected and died. The only ones not infected were those who only drank beer, not water.
