1Birds Using Anti-Bird Spikes
Recently, researchers discovered that birds have started using spikes meant to keep them away from buildings to protect their own nests from predators.
2. Someone once used snowballs to put out a train fire. After a collision in January 1882, rescuers ran out of water. They formed giant snowballs and rolled them onto the burning cars to extinguish the flames. Among the dead was Webster Wagner, crushed between two sleeping cars his company had built.
3. Margaret Chung, the first Chinese-American female physician, "adopted" and treated more than 1,500 soldiers throughout her lifetime. She treated them, cooked for them, and gifted them jade Buddha figurines to wear around their necks.
4. A Glasgow art venue/nightclub uses specialized technology inside its dance floor to collect its dancers' body heat and convert it into renewable energy to power itself.
5. Boxer Muhammad Ali was also an accomplished musician. He released the Grammy-nominated and American Dental Association-approved album "The Adventures of Ali and His Gang vs. Mr. Tooth Decay" in 1976.
Latest FactRepublic Video:
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6National Diaper Bank Aid
The National Diaper Bank coordinates and facilitates diaper donations to families in need. One in two U.S. families cannot afford enough diapers to keep their infant or child clean, dry, and healthy.
7. Atalanta, a heroine from Greek mythology, offered to marry any suitor who could outrun her in a race. She could defeat any man in a race, but Hippomenes got help from Aphrodite to beat her.
8. Each night, the U.S. National Solar Observatory adds a swimming pool's worth of ice to its tanks to distribute coolant throughout the observatory. The heat is intense enough to rapidly melt metal at the telescope mirror's focal point.
9. The YMCA used to offer dormitory housing at most of its U.S. locations and boasted over 100,000 rooms in the 1940s, more than any hotel chain at the time.
10. The Lost Apple Project is a nonprofit organization that searches abandoned farms in the Pacific Northwest to locate old apple varieties thought to be lost or extinct. There were approximately 17,000 varieties of apples in the U.S., but only about 4,500 are known to exist today.
11Hillary Misses Fatal Flight
Edmund Hillary, the first person to summit Mt. Everest, was scheduled to serve as a guide for a flight over Antarctica on Air New Zealand Flight 901, but canceled to embark on a U.S. speaking tour instead. Flight 901 ended up crashing into Mt. Erebus, killing all onboard.
12. A high school has its own train station. Only four trains a day stop at Caltrain's College Park station in San Jose, California, near Bellarmine Prep School. Caltrain would like to close the station, but students and parents say that it is very busy during the stops.
13. Until 1976, the U.S. Army shared responsibility with the Marines for transporting the President by helicopter. The aircraft, when crewed by their personnel, was known as "Army One."
14. Abraham Lincoln signed into law the act that established the IRS, which was the USA's first income tax. The Civil War expenses necessitated its implementation.
15. Thuy Trang, the actress who played the original Yellow Power Ranger, was one of the Vietnamese boat people who left Vietnam on a boat after the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.
16BonziBUDDY's Spyware Scandal
BonziBUDDY, a free virtual desktop assistant created in 1999, was called spyware after it was found to have collected users' personal information before serving them pop-up ads. Because of this, it had to pay $75,000 in fines and was discontinued in 2004.
17. Within three weeks of Prince's death, 700 people claimed to be his half-siblings or descendants.
18. A young Thomas Edison helped another inventor, Samuel Laws, design telegraph machines. He expected to be paid a few hundred dollars, but Laws instead gave him $40,000, which allowed Edison to afford a new research laboratory and factory. He hired 300 employees and developed 50 inventions there.
19. Women tend to bruise more easily because their skin has more fat and less collagen. Collagen supports blood vessels, making them less prone to breaking. Men's thicker collagen layer provides better protection for their blood vessels.
20. Metallica released a video in 2012 appealing for help to solve the 2009 murder of a 20-year-old fan, Morgan Harrington, who disappeared after their show. They offered $50,000 on top of the $100,000 offered by the police.
21Schwarzenegger's Jet Payment Salary
Arnold Schwarzenegger's salary for 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' was paid mostly by buying him a $12.75 million Gulfstream III jet.
22. There's an abandoned Six Flags in New Orleans that was shut down after heavy damage from Hurricane Katrina. Films like 'Percy Jackson,' 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,' and 'Jurassic World' have used it for filming.
23. 'Botanical sexism' refers to the practice of preferentially planting cloned male plants in urban areas to avoid the litter of fruits and flowers. However, since male plants produce pollen, this can lead to high pollen levels in the air, making the area inhospitable for people with allergies.
24. 'Night of the Living Dead' (1968) is responsible for the modern conception of zombies as unhinged flesh-eaters. Prior to the movie, "zombies" were typically portrayed as living people enslaved by priests. Interestingly, the entire film never mentions the word "zombie."
25. Researchers conducted a study on Capri Sun in 2013. To see what would grow on the filter paper, they filtered it through a vacuum. Researchers identified five species of fungus, noting that because they don't put preservatives in the drink, it allows lots of fungi to survive.
