26Zersetzung
The East German Stasi used psych warfare called Zersetzung against dissidents. Tactics involved breaking into homes and subtly manipulating the contents; moving furniture, altering alarms, removing pictures from walls. Many thought they were losing their minds and had mental breakdowns.
27. Cats put their butts in your face because they are allowing you to “get to know” them.
28. According to NASA researchers, an optimal nap will last between 20-30 minutes and a perfect nap will last exactly 26 minutes.
29. A Toronto lawyer named Charles Vance Millar died in 1926 with no relatives. In his will, he left all his remaining assets (equivalent to $9 million CAD) to the woman who had the most babies within 10 years of his death, creating a "baby race" where woman competed to have the most babies. The race ended in a tie between 4 mothers who each received $100,000 for their nine children.
30. John Stevens Henslow, a British priest, botanist and geologist, in 1831, was offered a place aboard a voyage to survey South America. After his wife dissuaded him from accepting, Henslow wrote to the captain, telling him to offer his place on the HMS Beagle to his protégé, Charles Darwin.
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31Francesco Redi
Italian scientist Francesco Redi in 1668 proved that maggots come from the eggs of flies. At that time, the prevailing wisdom was that maggots arose spontaneously from rotting meat.
32. Actor Humphrey Bogart was an avid chess player, often playing on set between takes. During World War 2, he played correspondence chess with members of the military posted overseas or in hospitals. The FBI intercepted this mail and thought he was sending secret codes to Europe.
33. A diabetic woman named Eva Saxl synthesized her own insulin in a basement during World War 2, saving not only her own life but the lives of over 200 people in the Shanghai Ghetto who would have died when legal insulin became unavailable.
34. In 1982, Jim Rice saved a 4-year-old boy's life. The boy was hit in the face by a foul ball and Rice knew it would take several minutes for the ballparks EMS to get to the boy. He immediately sprinted into the stands, picked up the boy, and ran him into the dugout to the team doctor.
35. Koalas have fingerprints so similar to humans that if unknowingly checked by a forensic scientist they wouldn't even know that they weren't human prints.
