26Jim Wilson
If you keep hearing the name "Jim Wilson" on a commercial flight then it is a secret code for a dead body.
27. Harry Truman’s official memorial isn’t a physical one like the Lincoln Memorial, but rather is a federal scholarship for graduate school worth $30,000 that’s given out to college juniors interested in public service.
28. Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management is an extensive guide to running a household in Victorian Britain, published in 1861. It recommends boiling pasta for an hour and forty-five minutes and states that potatoes are "suspicious; a great many are narcotic, and many are deleterious."
29. Disney’s “Baymax” character design was inspired by Chris Atkeson’s pioneer work in soft robotics. His research in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute is based on a theory: “For robots to effectively operate in our world, they’re going to have to be as squishy as we are”.
30. The elephant shrew was named simply for its long nose, but recent genetic evidence has found that it's more closely related to the elephant than it is to the shrew.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
31Earth
If Earth stopped spinning suddenly, the atmosphere would still be in motion with the Earth's original 1100 mile per hour rotation speed at the equator. All of the land masses would be scoured clean of anything not attached to bedrock.
32. John Wayne wore a toupee beginning in about 1948. Wayne felt more confident wearing his toupee and never denied it. He often joked saying "It's not phony, it's real hair. Of course, it's not mine, but it's real."
33. Discovery Channel lied to a scientist named Jonathan Davis in order to get him to participate in a fake documentary on Voodoo sharks for Shark Week and edited the interviews on Bull Sharks to make it appear as if he was researching the Cryptid Shark. He did not know what the program was about until it aired.
34. Caitlin is an Irish name historically pronounced "Kathleen" or thereabouts (in the same way that "Sean" is "Shawn"). In non-Irish countries, it has been pronounced "Kate-Lynn" or similar since the 1970's.
35. In 2004, corporate attorney Nathan Sawaya quit his lucrative job to build Lego professionally so he could "get away from the daily grind". His sculptures now command six-figure prices each.
