26Aristotle
Aristotle was Alexander the Great's private tutor and from his teachings developed a love of science, particularly of medicine and botany. Alexander included botanists and scientists in his army to study the many lands he conquered.
27. In the early 50s, before the national radar system and satellites, the US surveyed the skies with Operation Skywatch: a million civilian volunteers in rickety towers with binoculars and a telephone, watching for Soviet bombers.
28. By 1900, electric cars were so popular that New York City had a fleet of electric taxis, and electric cars accounted for a third of all vehicles on the road.
29. In 1984, javelin thrower Uwe Hohn threw a distance of 104.8m and became the first and only athlete in history to break the 100m barrier. Shortly afterwards some changes in the design of javelins were implemented and the records had to be restarted, turning his mark into an "eternal world record".
30. Tullimonstrum Gregarium, aka the Tully Monster is an animal so strange, that despite having thousands of fossils, we don’t know whether it was a vertebrate or an invertebrate. To add to the strangeness, fossils of this creature have only been found in one fossil site in the world.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
31Cigarette Filters
Cigarette filters were designed with color-changing chemicals to give the illusion that they filtered out toxins. In reality, the filters have little to no health benefits.
32. The melon drop scam is a con that targets Japanese tourists. Scammers buy a watermelon for a low price and then bump into an Asian tourist and charge them about $100 for the broken melon. This is because melons are priced higher in Japan. These days the scam involves any broken item.
33. In 2013, the Disney company attempted to trademark the phrase "Dia De Los Muertos", the name of a holiday celebrated in Mexico.
34. Procter & Gamble argued for years that Pringles were NOT potato chips, but Britain’s Supreme Court of Judicature ultimately determined in 2008 that they were, requiring Procter & Gamble to pay $160 million in taxes.
35. In July 2021, Lewis Hamilton pledged £20m ($27.5m) to set up the Hamilton Mission in an effort to improve groups who are underrepresented in motorsports due to its extremely high-cost entry barrier. Out of the 770 drivers in F1 history, he is the only black driver.
