26King Valagamba's Revenge
After 5 Tamil chiefs defeated the Sri Lankan king Valagamba in 103 B.C., one of them became king but was eventually slain by another, who also became king before being slain by another, and so on until only one remained. Then Valagamba returned, slew the last one and took back his throne.
27. The soundproofing of the new Rolls-Royce Ghost was so over-engineered that occupants in the car found the near-total silence disorienting, and some felt sick. Acoustic engineers had to go back and work on "harmonizing" various sounds in the car to add a continuous whisper.
28. Pork butt is not the rear end of the pig. It's the shoulder. The pork shoulders were named after the barrels they used to be kept in, which were called butts.
29. In 1927, a school board treasurer in the Bath Township in Michigan got angry over a property tax increase and spent most of the year sneaking hundreds of pounds of dynamite and pyrotol into the new school building. The resulting detonation at the first school bell killed 38 children. Earlier that day he killed his wife.
30. The 2014 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to the three men who invented the blue LED. Until their discovery in the 90s, white LED lights couldn't be produced.
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31More, More, More Song
The 1970s disco mega-hit "More, More, More" was recorded in Jamaica by American porn star Andrea True. She was there to film some commercials, but a diplomatic dispute with the USA forced her to choose between spending her pay there or forfeiting it. She decided to pay for a demo record.
32. There is a restaurant named Casa Sanchez in San Francisco which closed down in 2012, but people who got tattooed with their logo as part of a promotion can still get free pupusas from the restaurant that took over their lease.
33. There is a fake American Wild West town in England called Laredo, built by re-enactors, who bring it to life every other weekend.
34. There is a food preserving technology called High-Pressure Processing that puts food under 6000 bars of pressure and kills the bacteria by crushing it under huge pressure, even at cold temperatures. It is widely used for store-bought Guacamole.
35. Amidst early concerns about leaded gas, the engineer (Thomas Midgley Jr.) who discovered tetraethyllead as an additive demonstrated its 'safety' by pouring it over his hands and inhaling its vapor, stating he could do this every day without issue. He later took a leave of absence due to lead poisoning.
