26Kazan cats
Cats in Kazan, Russia were so good at catching mice, they were shipped to St. Petersburg in 1745 to deal with a rodent infestation. A statue dedicated to the cats can be found in Kazan today.
27. For every child born or adopted in Wales, the Welsh government will plant a native Welsh broadleaf tree. The scheme is called Plant! – the Welsh word for children.
28. IKEA has complete ownership over their supply chain of products, even growing their own wood (forest ownership), and uses approximately 1% of all lumber usage globally.
29. Children's author Roald Dahl singlehandedly took on six German bombers in World War 2, developed a medical shunt that saved 3,000 childrens' lives, and was partially the inspiration for James Bond.
30. Engineers have been able to increase the damage resistance of an airplane's black box by 60 times thanks to studying the anatomy of a woodpecker's skull.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
31Chris Hadfield’s wife
Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s wife kept hanging up on his phone calls from the ISS thinking he was a telemarketer. The 3-second delay made her think no one was on the other side of the line when she’d answer. NASA then gave her the ISS’s phone number so her phone read “SPACE” each time he called.
32. Abraham Lincoln once reviewed 303 death warrants for Santee Dakota Natives convicted of killing farmers. He approved 39. The Governor of Minnesota then told Lincoln he should have approved all of them for more support in the 1864 election. Lincoln responded with "I could not afford to hang men for votes."
33. 2 donkeys that have been together for 10 years at a zoo in Poland were separated after a local politician and parents complained about them mating in front of children. Experts weighed in and a petition to rejoin them got 7,000 signatures so the zoo put them back together.
34. A geologist named Eugene Shoemaker wanted to go to the moon in the mid-1900s. He failed the medical exam to go to the moon, but he still helped train astronauts on Apollo 11, 12, 13. After dying in a car crash, his ashes made it to the moon. To this day they are still there.
35. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy solved his own murder case. He was poisoned with a cup of tea in a London hotel. Working with Scotland Yard detectives, as he lay dying, he traced the lethal substance to a former comrade in the Russian secret service.
