1Bald eagle
When a bald eagle loses a feather on one wing, it will lose a feather on the other in order to keep its balance.
2. Jack Nicholson's first job in Hollywood was an office worker for animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. They offered him an entry-level job as an animator, but he declined, citing his desire to become an actor.
3. There is a mass grave (Showmen's Rest) near Chicago containing about 60 circus performers. Some visitors report hearing ghostly elephant sounds at night.
4. While filming the 2000 hit movie, Castaway, Tom Hanks received a skin cut and got a staph infection that nearly killed him. The cut gave him blood poisoning. He was in the hospital for 3 days and the production of the movie was shut down for 3 weeks.
5. Before 1954, stop signs used to be yellow with black lettering. This was because there was no red dye that would not fade over time. However, by 1954, sign makers began using a fade-resistant porcelain enamel, and it was declared that stop signs would be red with white lettering.
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6Pre-boarding
The standard airline practice of pre-boarding (i.e., allowing passengers with small children and those who need extra assistance to board first) actually improves boarding efficiency by 28% and decreases time to takeoff.
7. Born-blind people actually dream of visual content. That's because auditory and tactile inputs can create virtual images in their brain, and that images can be revealed in their dreams.
8. Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas holds the record for most advertisements by one person in history, appearing in over 800 commercials.
9. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation offers $100,000 grants to people trying to make better condoms.
10. The first known use of "toast" as a metaphorical term for "you're dead" was in the film Ghostbusters (1984), in which Bill Murray's character declares, "This chick is toast", before attacking the villain. The earliest known printed account is from The St. Petersburg Times of Oct. 1, 1987.
11Brad Treat
In 2016, a forest service officer named Brad Treat took a blind turn while mountain biking at 30 mph. He crashed into a large grizzly bear that was sitting on the trail and was immediately mauled to death in response to the collision.
12. The Indonesian flag is nearly the same as the Dutch flag, but with the bottom third and blue strip removed. After 138 years of Dutch rule, youths removed a Dutch flag tore off the blue strip and re-hoisted it as an Indonesian flag in 1945 (War of Independence 1945-1949).
13. The ‘Johnson Treatment’ was President Lyndon Johnson’s own particular brand of persuasion. He used to urinate or expose his penis during conversations to establish dominance.
14. A gold miner named Burro Schmidt started digging a tunnel through the Mojave Desert mountains to safely transport his ore to the smelter. He completed the tunnel in 38 years, moving 5,800 tons of granite with a pick. In the meantime, a road was built so he never used the tunnel.
15. After World War 2, Rod Serling (the creator of The Twilight Zone) made money testing military parachutes. On one occasion, he made $1,000 testing a jet ejection seat that had killed the previous three testers.
16Apple
In ancient Greece, throwing an apple to a woman was surprisingly normal and it meant a marriage proposal.
17. Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine had a dream where cannibals were going to cook him. In the dream, their spears had holes at the tip that they raised up and down. This inspired him for the breakthrough of the machine, putting a hole at the tip instead of the base.
18. The tomb of Genghis Khan (died August 18, 1227) has been the object of much speculation and research. To this day, 800 years after his death, the site remains undiscovered.
19. Cecil Chubb was the last person to own Stonehenge. Stonehenge was put up for auction in 1915 and Chubb bought it on a whim. It is speculated he bought the stones as a present for his wife and she was less than pleased. Chubb donated Stonehenge to the nation in 1918 and was made a baronet.
20. The Queen band still performed in apartheid South Africa when the majority of bands refused to and was by far the largest band to do so. They were subsequently placed on the United Nations' artist blacklist.
21Xerxes
In order to appease Persia for killing their ambassadors, Sparta sent two young noblemen volunteers, Bulis and Sperthias, to offer themselves to be executed in the atonement. Xerxes sent the men back, saying that he would not sink to Sparta's level and did not consider Sparta's guilt loosened.
22. In the past 300,000 years, we overlapped with 6 known human species. All but us are now extinct, though we interbred. We carry the DNA of at least two (Denisovans and Neanderthals). Some Neanderthal skeletons carry our DNA too. Denisovans and Neanderthals mixed separately from us also.
23. The last uncontacted Australian Aboriginal people living a traditional nomadic life were encountered in 1984 in the heart of the Gibson Desert in Western Australia. They had been unaware of the arrival of Europeans on the continent, let alone cars - or even clothes.
24. The inhabitants of islands that were temporarily occupied during the Pacific War thought they were being visited by gods, and when the soldiers eventually left, they formed rituals that imitate planes, runways, and marches to try to bring them back. Many still do this to this day.
25. Lottery is not allowed under law in Nevada because the gaming industry in the state does not want competition.
