1Richard Feynman
When asked to investigate the space shuttle Challenger disaster, Richard Feynman wrote a very critical report about NASA's safety policy concluding: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
2. The Golden Records on the Voyager probes includes copyrighted material that aliens will be able to access and use completely for free, but we can't.
3. A mother named Luz Cuevas found her kidnapped daughter (Aaliyah) at a birthday party five years after the baby had been presumed dead.
4. Having an ancestor that caught the plague and survived could result in their descendants being immune to the HIV virus.
5. A high school basketball coach named Mirach Grimes was fired after his team won 100-0 because the Catholic school he worked for thought that winning by such a wide margin did not show a “Christlike and honorable approach to competition.”
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6Tommy Wiseau
The character of Mark in Tommy Wiseau's movie The Room is named after Matt Damon. Despite being a huge fan of Damon, Wiseau couldn't remember his actual name.
7. The name of video game developer ‘Sucker Punch Productions’ was selected because the wife of one of the co-founders didn't like it because 'We figured that the best way to choose a name a 14-year-old boy would think was cool was to choose a name that a lovely and talented 38-year-old woman thought was unacceptable.'
8. The oldest surviving work (De Agri Cultura) of Latin prose is a guide to farmers by Cato the Elder. Along with detailed instructions on running a farm, it contains a guide to brewing wine and many cooking recipes, including one for cheesecake.
9. Since the 1300's, the pronoun “thou” was actually considered more informal and even derogatory than the pronoun “you.” This is also why its usage began declining in the 17th century because it was considered “impolite.”
10. Actor Brian Blessed is a fully trained astronaut, having completed over 800 hours of 'space training' in Moscow, and "remains the number one civilian on the wait list for the International Space Station."
11Challenger crew
Crew members of the Challenger space shuttle survived the “explosion,” manually activated their emergency breathing packs, and were very likely alive for the full 2 minute and 45 seconds, 65,000-foot free-fall until their crew cabin crashed into the ocean.
12. In the late 80s, NASA studied houseplants as a means of providing cleaner and purer air for their space stations. They found Peace Lilies and Chrysanthemums to be the best all-rounders at air filtering.
13. It is legal in New York to own a monkey if you are paralyzed and the monkey is trained to perform household tasks for you.
14. William the Conqueror (also known as William The Bastard) was denied a marriage proposal by Matilda of Flanders who felt marrying a bastard was below her. He won her heart by reading the response and immediately riding more than 250 miles from Normandy to Bruges to grab her by the hair and throw her in the mud.
15. Nintendo's character Mario is named after Mario Segale, who was the company's landlord in 1981. All Segale has publicly said about this is "I'm still waiting for my royalty checks".
16Wax worms
Wax worms can eat and break down one of the most common plastics, polyethylene. Their digestive process breaks the plastic's chemical bond, producing an organic compound.
17. In 1971, Nike paid a college student named Carolyn Davidson $35 for the "swoosh" logo she designed.
18. A Curaçao woman named Odette Doest rescued a flamingo that had crashed into a window. She named it Bob and nursed it back to health. When she realized Bob couldn’t be released back to the wild, she made it an ambassador for his species, visiting schools with him to teach children about island wildlife and the importance of conservation.
19. In India, the police aren't allowed to handcuff prisoners unless they are at an extreme risk of escaping. The Supreme Court said that handcuffing is against the dignity of an unconvicted prisoner and thus violative of his fundamental rights. So policemen hold hands instead.
20. Caterpillars don't "morph" into butterflies. Their bodies turn into a protein 'goop' within their chrysalis and rapid DNA-driven cell-division takes care of the rest.
21Lebron James
Lebron James was so hated back in 2012 that even a captured Al-Qaeda member wrote letters expressing his disgust at his decision to go to the Miami Heat. He told his lawyer that “LeBron James is a very bad man and should apologize to the city of Cleveland.”
22. Three composers created "The Most Unwanted Song" based on an opinion poll of annoying musical elements in 1997. It includes bagpipes, a rapping opera singer, children singing about Christmas shopping at Walmart, and much more. It is twenty-two minutes long.
23. Hasbro has trademarked the smell of Play-Doh. It is described as a “sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough.”
24. Japanese Yakuza have a unique form of extortion known as sōkaiya. Instead of harassing small businesses for protection money, the yakuza harasses the stockholder meetings of large corporations.
25. The ‘Slow Movement’ advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace, and “doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible.” It began with a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome in 1986. “It’s about quality over quantity in everything.”
