1Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bryant is the only person to have won both an Olympic Medal and an Oscar in 2017 for the film Dear Basketball.
2. Charles Goodyear is credited with inventing the chemical process to create and manufacture pliable, waterproof, moldable rubber. Goodyear was at the Eagle India Rubber Company where he accidentally discovered that combining rubber and sulfur over a hot stove caused the rubber to vulcanize.
3. The Memory of Mankind is a sophisticated time capsule project in Austria designed to last a million years. The designers made a system for the capsule to be discovered by a future society and even planned for the possibility of it being discovered by alien life.
4. Steven Spielberg watched Seinfeld episodes while filming Schindler's List to cheer himself up.
5. Around 1000 years after the great pyramids were built, most mammoth populations had died out. However, in Wrangel Island in Russia, there were around 500-1000 mammoths still alive.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Alton Brown
The cinematographer for the music video of REM’s “The One I Love” was chef, Alton Brown. Reportedly, between takes, he would watch cooking shows and thought he could do better.
7. The Chicagoland Tylenol murders still remain unsolved and no one was ever charged. In 1982, 7 people were murdered via cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules; leading to industry-wide tamper-proof seals and phasing out of capsules.
8. Most watches advertised online and instore display the time 10 past 10. This is because the 10:10 position is symmetrical, and the human brain tends to appreciate symmetry and orderliness. Also, the 10:10 hands look “happy” due to the fact that the hands look like a smile.
9. In 1987 a group in Mumbai, India pretending to be CBI officers (Indian FBI) advertised and conducted interviews claiming to be hiring "Intelligence and Security Officers". 26 people were hired, and then they were used to "raid" (rob) a jewelry store. The group was never caught.
10. MDZhB is a Russian ghost radio station that has been broadcasting since 1982. No one claims it but it has continuously produced a buzz punctuated with someone making a short random statement once or twice a week since its inception.
11Censored Eleven
The Censored Eleven is a list of Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoons that in 1968 were deemed too offensive for public consumption. They have not been broadcast on TV since then, and aside from one screening in 2010 at a film festival, they have never received any official release by Warner Bros.
12. The originator of the popular saying, "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" was Grace Hopper, a United States Navy Rear Admiral and pioneer of computer programming who popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL.
13. Upon its release 'Stalker', a film by Andrei Tarkovsky, was criticized for being slow. In response to this Tarkovsky replied, "The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts."
14. Lice were so prevalent during the middle ages that delousing became a social activity. People would sit down and have a chat or gossip while removing each other's lice.
15. People who don’t get enough sleep are more likely to have bigger appetites due to the fact that their leptin levels (leptin is an appetite-regulating hormone) fall, promoting appetite increase.
16Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth believed that his birthday was on February 7, 1894. However, when he applied for a passport he looked up his birth certificate and found his birthday listed as February 6, 1895, nearly a full year later than he thought.
17. Someone tried and failed to save President Abraham Lincoln. His name was Major Henry Rathbone. After Booth fired the shot, Rathbone tried to tackle him to the ground, but Booth was able to get free by slicing Rathbone in the arm with a dagger. Rathbone was never free of the guilt till his death.
18. After the pandemic began, many investors purchased the wrong Zoom stock, getting shares in a defunct Chinese hardware company, instead of the calling app, Zoom Video Communications. This meant that the wrong Zoom stock price soared by 1800% before the SEC stepped in.
19. Cybercrime is a bigger business in the US than drug trafficking and generates significantly bigger profits.
20. In Svalbard, by law, you must carry a gun when traveling outside of the settlements because of the archipelago’s abundant polar bear population.
21POW-MIA flag
The U.S. Postal Service is required by law to fly the POW-MIA flag anytime they fly the American Flag.
22. A prisoner named James Scott fought in 7 nationally televised boxing matches from behind bars. He rose to be the No.2 contender in the WBA rankings, defeating the No.1 along the way. The WBA stripped his ranking after becoming concerned that a prison inmate might actually win the world title.
23. Claw machines are rigged, and the owner can program them to drop a toy after it gets picked up, giving you the illusion of near-success.
24. The Hmong people communicate by whistling. The valleys of the Himalayas they live in, makes this mode of communication ideal for transmission, sometimes carrying the sounds as far as 8 km. They even perform whistling courtship ceremonies, and once in a relationship, lovers can make up their own ‘secret’ syllables.
25. A device which has been aptly named the StingRay is used by Law Enforcement for surveillance. It mimics a cell tower forcing all nearby mobile phones and other cellular data devices to connect to it.
