1Emerson Romero
Emerson Romero was a silent film actor who was deaf. When movies with sound were invented, deaf actors got fewer roles and the intertitle text was removed. This led him to make an early form of movie captioning in 1947 so that movies would still be accessible to deaf people.
2. Catacomb saints are skeletons exhumed from Roman catacombs and decorated with gold and jewels to serve as "replacement relics" for those destroyed during the Protestant Reformation. It is unlikely that any of those skeletons are actually of the people they are reputed by tradition to be.
3. The average NBA player has a wingspan-to-height ratio greater than the diagnostic criteria for Marfan syndrome; a disorder that results in abnormally long limbs.
4. Willie O'Ree, the first black man to play in the NHL, was blind in one eye. It was caused by a ricocheting puck that hit him in the face when he was 18 and he kept it a secret for his entire 21-year career.
5. When Charles Darwin was sent some flowers from a friend, he noticed that one of the flowers was extremely long and he bet some kind of moth with a really long mouth must exist to pollinate it. A few years later Morgan's sphinx moth was discovered which had a really long proboscis.
Latest FactRepublic Video:
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Lost Village of Tryweryn
The village of Tryweryn, which is now lost, was a Welsh village and one of the last predominantly Welsh-speaking communities. The village was forcibly vacated, destroyed, and purposely flooded by the British government in 1965 in order to create a reservoir to provide water for the English city of Liverpool.
7. The Mummy (1999) helped Universal studios gross over $1 billion in home video sales.
8. Even though humans are on average getting taller for the past several thousand years, we're still not as tall as we used to be pre-civilization.
9. A grown cat can jump between 5-8 times its height. That would be the equivalent of a human being able to jump from the ground up to the 3rd or 4th floor.
10. The term 'patient 0' is based on a misunderstanding. An early HIV patient was named 'patient O', standing for 'patient OUT of California'. People misinterpreted this letter as the numeral 0, leading to its widespread usage today.
11Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney is the only artist to have reached the top of the UK charts as a solo artist, duo, trio, quartet, quintet, and musical ensemble.
12. Cher is often credited as being the first artist to use auto-tune in a song with her 1998 hit "Believe."
13. In 1997, David Bowie sold asset-backed securities, dubbed "Bowie bonds", which awarded investors a share in his future royalties for 10 years.
14. In 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', Steven Spielberg wanted gestapo agent Toht to be a cyborg with a metal arm that could transform into a flamethrower and machine gun. George Lucas rejected these ideas as being too far-fetched.
15. The US-Canada border is the longest international border in the world. Alaska's border alone contributes to 38% of it.
162010 Vancouver Luge Disaster
The 2010 Vancouver luge gold medallist Felix Loch had his medal melted into 2 discs and gave one to the parents of a deceased competitor who died in a practice run on the day of the opening ceremony.
17. During the French occupation of Vietnam, the city of Hanoi had a huge rat problem. The colonial French government wanted the rats exterminated from the sewer system, so they set a bounty for each dead rat tail. So began the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902. Thousands of tails were submitted per day by the rat catchers, but the rat problem only grew worse. Investigation found that the hunters were breeding, not hunting, rats for their tails.
18. Some states in the USA have "Dead Red" laws, according to which if you're on a motorcycle or a moped that is too light or not large enough to trip the sensor that changes the light from red to green, you're legally allowed to run the red light after waiting for a reasonable amount of time.
19. The Tasmanian Devil only appeared in 5 out of the original 1,002 Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoon shorts.
20. During Germany's invasion of Russia, Joseph Goebbels sent a plea to the citizens of Germany to send in their winter clothing for the troops. This resulted in many Nazis on the grim Russian front wearing incongruously festive Christmas outfits.
21Big Ben's Unique Tone
The Big Ben’s bell has a unique sound because it cracked in 1859, barely two months after its inauguration. The bell has since been oriented in such a way that the hammer doesn’t strike the ‘crack.’
22. Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller was an accomplished Olympic swimmer. In 1927, when he and his brother were swimming in Lake Michigan, they saw a boat capsize. They rescued at least 14 people and 11 of those people survived.
23. Michael Jackson ordered his music video "Thriller" to be destroyed after being threatened with excommunication from his Jehovah's Witness faith. Michael later apologized and settled for the disclaimer at the start of the video.
24. There is a Polish soup called czernina that's made with duck blood and other ingredients. Traditionally, this soup was served to men who were rejected after asking for permission to wed their significant other.
25. Migraines are 3 times more common in women than in men.
