1Pelé
In 1967, the Nigerian Civil War was halted for 48 hours so that both sides could watch Pelé play in Lagos.
2. Albert Einstein was still working on his Theory of Everything while laying on his deathbed, in the last hours of his life, while fading in and out of consciousness.
3. Viggo Mortensen published a book of poetry called “Ten Last Night” before he became famous. He also speaks fluent Spanish, Danish, and French and is also proficient in Catalan, Swedish, Italian, and Norwegian.
4. California produces 82% of the world’s almonds.
5. In 1996, a Canadian man named Robert Dennis Blair Adams fled Canada feeling that someone was out to get him and kill him. He took his money and drove to Tennessee. He ended up dead in a parking lot with his money around his half-naked body. Police found that he was killed by a blow to the stomach and the case remains unsolved.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Festival
In Germany, there's a festival without bands. There is even a stage, but no one is performing. The idea is to enjoy the atmosphere of a festival without the pressure of having to see all the bands you paid for.
7. Every time an alcoholic, relapses then quits again, the withdrawal symptoms get worse. It's called the kindling effect.
8. Clive Wearing, an acclaimed musician developed serious amnesia after contracting herpes. He can't form memories longer than 30 seconds and always thinks he's just awoken from a coma. Despite this, he can recognize his wife and can still conduct an orchestra.
9. The mouse cursor is tilted because in the early days when it was a vertical arrow pointing up, people found it difficult to see a vertical line on the low-resolution screens of the time. Therefore it was tilted to make it easier to find.
10. In 1984, a pipe-fitter named David Bocks who worked for a uranium core processing plant (Fernald Feed Materials Production Center) in Ohio was discovered in a processing furnace. The plant was discovered to be dumping massive amounts of radioactive waste into the atmosphere. Co-workers of the deceased suspected he was a whistleblower and was murdered.
11Water
When fluoride was first introduced to American water supplies in the 1940s and 50s it was criticized as a Communist plot to socialize medicine and deplete the brain power of American children.
12. The only way Louis Pasteur was able to study rabies was to keep a supply of infected animals in the laboratory. His assistants routinely pinned down rabid dogs and collected vials of their foamy saliva and were under orders to shoot anyone that was bitten by the animals in the head.
13. Finding Nemo is the second film to be dubbed in Navajo, following the success of Navajo "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope". It was a joint effort between the Navajo Nation Museum and The Walt Disney Studios for more than a year.
14. On two separate occasions, Lance Sergeant Johnson Beharry was leading a convoy of vehicles when his vehicle was hit by RPGs. On both occasions, his commander and others inside the vehicle were wounded. Both times he drove his burning vehicle out of the ambush, despite suffering head injuries.
15. Platypuses don’t have nipples, despite being mammals and having mammary glands platypuses do not have nipples with which to feed their babies. Instead, they release milk through glands like sweat. The milk then gathers in grooves on the mum’s abdomen where the puggles lap it up.
16Claud Hatcher
American businessman Claud Hatcher bought a large amount of Coca-Cola syrup from a salesman and thought he deserved a reduced rate for the amount. When refused, Hatcher vowed to never purchase Coca-Cola again and was determined to develop his own soft drink. He kept his vow and today we have Royal Crown (RC) Cola.
17. In the 17th century, choir boys as young as eight years old would be castrated in order to preserve their pre-pubescent "angel voices."
18. Someone in Voronezh, Russia vandalized a Soviet-era monument not by destroying it, but by painting it to look like Patrick Star from Spongebob Squarepants.
19. Emperor Wu of Jin (China) had so many concubines that he had trouble choosing between them, so he often rode his goat-driven carriage around the palace until the goats decided to stop. Because of this many of the women planted bamboo leaves and salt outside their bedrooms to attract the goats.
20. Humans are the only species on earth capable of accurately throwing objects.
21Pabst Brewing Company
During Prohibition, Pabst Brewing Company stopped making beer and switched to cheese production, selling more than 8 million pounds of Pabst-ett Cheese. When Prohibition ended, the company went back to selling beer, and the cheese line was sold to Kraft.
22. In Switzerland, it's perfectly legal to download any movie or games you want on the internet for a private usage. You can even share it with your friends.
23. The famous 500-year-old Treaty Oak was deliberately vandalized in 1989 with enough herbicide to kill over 100 oak trees. It managed to survive and still thrives today, albeit two-thirds of its original size.
24. In the 1980s, Pharmaceutical Company Bayer knowingly sold medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS, infecting thousands of people around the world. After realizing their product was contaminated, Bayer still kept sending the same medicine to Asia and Latin America while selling a new safer version in the West.
25. Cup Noodles was invented after Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant ramen, watched as American supermarket executives broke up his ramen to fit into styrofoam coffee cups, added boiling water and then proceeded to eat the ramen with forks.
