26Henrietta Jackson
In 1894, a female cook named Henrietta Jackson at Cornell University was killed when freshmen redirected chlorine gas into the kitchen as part of a hazing prank.
27. Iceland used to have birch forests, but the Viking settlers cut them down and later their sheep ate the saplings, preventing any kind of forest regrowth. This led to the barren landscape we see in Iceland today.
28. Polynesians may have traveled to the Americas in pre-Columbian times. Sweet potatoes which originated from the Americas were found in the islands when Captain James Cook discovered them. The Maori word for sweet potato “kumala” is almost the same as the Quechuan's word “k'umara” for sweet potato.
29. In 1932, General Macarthur and Major Patton tear-gassed World War I veterans calling themselves the “Bonus Army.” They had marched on Washington demanding full payment for their service during World War I. 2 vets were killed. Historians claim that without the protest, there may have never been a GI Bill.
30. An American doctor named Dr. Ian Crozier survived Ebola after contracting the virus in his eye, which turned it green. He regained his eyesight by taking a non-FDC approved experimental secret drug.
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31James Eagan Holmes
In 2012, James Eagan Holmes, the guy who committed the Aurora shooting during the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, was sentenced to 13 life sentences in prison, with an additional 3,318 years for rigging his apartment with bombs and 140 counts of attempted murder.
32. 14 years before the Titanic sank, a book named “Futility” (or “The Wreck of the Titan”) told the story of an unsinkable ship named “Titan” which also struck an iceberg on its starboard side in the North Atlantic on an April night. The fictitious ship closely matched the Titanic’s length, weight, speed, capacity, and lack of lifeboats.
33. American political commentator Oliver North solicited $10,000,000 from the Sultan of Brunei as a way around US rules on funding Contras in Nicaragua. The money never went to them, but to a Swiss businessman instead because North entered the wrong bank account number.
34. Film director Richard Stanley once escaped from war-torn Afghanistan with his wounded cameraman after despite being on LSD that he took earlier. He said the LSD saved his life as he could see in the dark and believed he could smell the landmines.
35. Hummingbirds are only native to the Americas.
