26Jewish Census
The German Army conducted a "Jewish Census" of their soldiers during World War 1, designed to prove that Jews were shirking military service. It ended up proving the opposite, so the results were never published.
27. The US Navy used to forbid "obscene" tattoos, which led to a boom in tattoos of nude women among men who didn't want to serve. If they joined the Navy later, they had to have a tattoo artist "dress" the woman.
28. In 2015, a woman named Ingeborg Rapoport, 74 years after being denied her Ph.D. by the Nazis for being Jewish, successfully defended her dissertation and received her doctorate from the University of Hamburg at the age of 102, making her the oldest person ever to receive one.
29. English's formal word for "you" was "you", while "thou" was used to express intimacy and familiarity.
30. If the Axis ever captured Gibraltar during World War 2, the British planned to seal 6 men in a secret cave overlooking the harbor to secretly monitor and radio back enemy movements. The cave had enough provisions for the men to stay for up to 7 years.
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31Lucius Licinius Crassus
Roman senator Lucius Licinius Crassus held a funeral for his pet eel. When another senator ridiculed him for this, he replied: “did you not bury three wives and not shed a tear?”
32. During the civil war John T. Wilder, the commander of the Union “lightning brigade” personally took out a loan to buy his soldiers advanced new repeating rifles because the government would not supply them. Using the firepower advantage afforded by the new rifles, his brigade proved extremely effective in combat.
33. When Harry Wilson was 18 months old, his proud Grandfather bet £50 that he would one day represent Wales in football and was quoted 2500/1 at his local bookmaker. 16 years later he became the youngest ever Wales debutant, netting his grandfather £125,000.
34. The desk in the Oval Office is called the Resolute Desk, named after the ship it was built out of in 1880. The HMS Resolute was found empty and adrift in pack-ice, then salvaged by the US and gifted back to the UK, which helped narrowly avoid a war. Franklin D. Roosevelt requested the addition of a door with the presidential seal to conceal his leg braces he had due to polio.
35. It took 87 years to build Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, from 1163-1250.
