1White Day
In South Korea, February 14th is Valentine's day where women give men presents. March 14th is White Day where men give women presents. April 14th is Black Day where single people gather together, dress in black, and eat a bunch of food.
2. In 2011, a 39-story building named Techno Mart in Seoul was evacuated after tremors were felt on the top floors. Instead of an earthquake, it was found that an exercise class on the 12th floor was playing Snap!'s “The Power”, which happened to match the building's resonant frequency and caused it to violently shake.
3. Soju is South Korea’s national drink. It’s a clear alcohol, typically made from rice or barley, with an alcohol content of about 20% and a government-mandated price of about $1 per bottle, so all citizens can afford it.
4. Every November in South Korea, there is a day called Suneung, where everyone tries to keep the noise levels down to help students concentrate on the most important exam of their lives. Planes are grounded, constructions are paused, banks close and even military training ceases. In some cases, when some students are running late to the test, they are escorted by police officers.
5. In South Korea, it is illegal to sell phones with unremovable software that is not critical to system operation or maintenance.
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6Licensed masseurs
In South Korea, only visually impaired people can be licensed masseurs. This law dates back over 100 years to a Japanese colonial rule set up to guarantee the blind a livelihood.
7. "The Champ" is a jigsaw puzzle that has 44 pieces that can be assembled in 32 different ways with only one of them being correct.
8. Pablo Picasso always carried a revolver loaded with blanks, which he would use to shoot at people who questioned him about the meaning of his paintings.
9. If your kids want to have a lemonade stand in Canada's capital city, Ottawa, the sign must be in English and French, as well 7% of the profits must be donated to charity.
10. Abraham Lincoln's assassination helped to popularize travel by train due to the amount of press and exposure Lincoln's funeral train received. Up until then, most Americans had never seen a passenger train.
11Knocker-uppers
Before alarm clocks were cheap or reliable, "knocker-uppers" specialized in waking people up in the morning by shooting dried peas with blowguns at their windows. They would not leave until they made sure that their clients had actually awoken.
12. Malawian albinos are murdered for their bones. Albino children are being hunted like animals in Malawi where their bones are sold in the belief that their body parts bring wealth, happiness, and good luck.
13. During World War 2, the UK planned to build 'unsinkable' giant aircraft carriers with 40-feet thick hulls made out of a mixture of ice and wood pulp. The project was canceled, but the scale model took three years to melt.
14. After the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the striking miners feared jail and confiscation of their guns, so many decided to hide their weapons in the woods before leaving Logan County. Collectors and researchers are still finding weapons and ammunition hidden around the site to this day.
15. You should wait 72 hours after it rains to swim in the ocean. Storm runoff that empties into the ocean carries increased levels of contaminants, like bacteria, fertilizers, and sewage. Swimming in the ocean too soon can increase your risk of various infections.
16Tesla models
The roof of some Tesla models appears orange and red when wet due to a protective UV/infrared layer in the glass to reduce heat. Water droplets cause light to bounce around and reflect some of the infrared light (normally not visible to us) in a form that is visible to our eyes
17. Rio residents rely on an app called "Fogo cruzado" to keep track of all gun battles happening in the city any given day in order to avoid them.
18. The red-crested tree rat, thought to have gone extinct 119 years ago, showed up out of the blue at a hotel in Colombia where two conservationists were staying and let them photograph him for a few hours before disappearing again.
19. Poison Ivy doesn't actually spread when scratched and is not contagious. The reason it creates the illusion of doing so is that different parts of the body absorb the oil at different speeds.
20. The tradition of spraying champagne after winning a championship was started by Dan Gurney (Team Ford) after the 1967 Le Mans 24-hour race. A huge underdog, Gurney thought the "hard-fought victory needed something special" and spontaneously hosed down all gathered, including and the eldest grandson of Henry Ford, Henry Ford II.
21Gremlins
Gremlins were invented by the RAF as mythical creatures who break airplanes, as a way to explain random mechanical failures in reports. An “investigation” was even conducted to make sure Gremlins didn't have Nazi sympathies.
22. When a gypsy boxing champion named Johann Trollmann was put in a labor camp in Nazi Germany, he was forced to fight against a feared ex-criminal and prison guard and won despite being malnourished and exhausted. The still bitter prison guard sought revenge by murdering Johann with a shovel later.
23. Guinness World Records accepts payments (ranging from $12,000 to $500,000) from individuals, organizations, and governments to either find a record that they could break or to create an entirely new record category.
24. French writer Voltaire teamed up with a mathematician to exploit a loophole in the French lottery that set him up financially for life.
25. Congo's Salonga National Park is the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest national park and the largest in Africa. It is considered to be practically virgin, unaffected by human activities, and largely unexplored.
