26Charles Herbert Lightoller
The second officer (Charles Herbert Lightoller) of the Titanic stayed onboard till the end and was trapped underwater until a boiler explosion set him free. Later, he volunteered in World War 2 and helped evacuate over 120 men from Dunkirk.
27. In Victorian London, mail was delivered to homes 12 times a day. "Return of post" was a commonly used phrase for requesting an immediate response to be mailed at the next scheduled delivery. It was quite common for people to complain if a letter didn't arrive within a few hours.
28. An Iraqi named Hussain al-Shahristani was forced into solitary confinement in prison for 8 years under Saddam Hussein. He kept his sanity by “making up mathematical problems, which he then tried to solve.” He later became Iraq’s minister of higher education and scientific research.
29. Pencils historically never had lead in them, they in fact always had graphite. When graphite was discovered, it was thought to be a form of lead, hence calling it "lead" in the pencil.
30. Former Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg once went incognito as a taxi-driver in Oslo because he wanted to "hear from real Norwegian voters and that taxis were one of the few places where people shared their true views."
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31Tibor Rubin
A Hungarian-born United States Army soldier Tibor Rubin survived the Holocaust, fought for the US Army during the Korean War, became a POW, and had to wait 55 years to receive his Medal of Honor, all because his sergeant was an anti-Semite.
32. Electricity was first installed in the White House in 1891. It was such a new concept that President Benjamin Harrison and his wife both refused to touch light switches due to their fear of electrocution so the White House staff had to follow them around and turn the lights off and on for them.
33. Charles Darwin, while working on a book about orchids, was frustrated and wrote in a letter to his friend “But I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.”
34. Penguin poop will change Antarctica's ecosystem. For the last 5,000 years, penguins have delivered roughly 16 million pounds of nutrient-rich poop on the rocks of Antarctica. This poop can one-day support plants and animals which currently can't survive in Antartica.
35. Smoky the Yorkie was a pet dog to soldiers in the south pacific, weighing 4lbs, who kept operational 40 United States fighters by running a wire tied to her collar through a 6in pipe, completing a 3-day construction job in minutes. He also had 10 recognized combat flights and 8 combat stars.
