1Wrasse fish
A single cleaner wrasse fish works removing bloodsucking parasites from up to 2,000 client fish per day. They sometimes cheat their clients by taking illicit bites of the protective mucus covering their skin. If a client gets upset, they try to make amends by offering a complementary fin massage.
2. Petface dogs with puppy-like features have juvenile traits systematically built into their DNA through centuries of rigorous breeding. Many of the same traits that make these dogs "cute" give them a predisposition to respiratory disorders, skin conditions, reproductive issues, and eye injuries.
3. A Jewish parachutist named Hannah Szenes was dropped by the British into Yugoslavia during World War 2 to help rescue Hungarian Jews about to be deported to Auschwitz. Arrested, imprisoned and tortured, she refused to reveal the details of her mission or her transmitter code. She was eventually executed.
4. The Stanley cup can only have 5 large rings with winning team names/members. When the cup is fully engraved, the oldest ring is removed and sent to the Hockey Hall of Fame, and a new one is installed.
5. One of the few references that Leonardo Da Vinci made to sexuality in his notebooks states: “The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions.”
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6Crying
Studies have shown that people who cry more are seen as warmer individuals who are more approachable. At the same time though, these individuals are perceived by others as being less competent or “stupid.”
7. The interstate system was meant to run between cities, not through them. President Eisenhower got the highways built, but he said putting them inside cities "was entirely against his original concept and wishes."
8. When glasses for nearsightedness began to appear in the 15th Century because they were unusual and rare, they were seen as having magical powers, and people who wore glasses were thought to be in league with the devil.
9. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is being eaten alive by millions of venomous sea stars known as crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS). The scientist has developed a new robot to hunt and kill these sea stars. This murderous, autonomous underwater vehicle has been named RangerBot. It can kill a starfish with a single shot of bile.
10. A hockey player named Ivan Tkachenko who died in a tragic plane crash in Russia was anonymously giving money to sick kids, and the last half-million ruble payment was transferred to a young cancer patient minutes before the plane take-off.
11Footprint Database
There is a forensic database containing tens of thousands of shoe impressions. It is used to match footprints at crime scenes to specific makes of the shoe. The name of the database is Solemate.
12. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch contains around 80 million kg of floating plastic debris of various size and shape, principally made of Polyethylene and Polypropylene, accumulated in an area 3 times the size of continental France.
13. "Purple Rain" was remade in the Sahara featuring the nomadic Tuareg people. Since their language has no word for "purple," the title became "Rain The Color of Blue With A Little Red In It."
14. Parents in Zimbabwe who cannot afford school fees can offer livestock such as goats or sheep as payment for tuition fees.
15. The "razor" in Ockham's razor refers to distinguishing between two hypotheses either by "shaving away" unnecessary assumptions or cutting apart two similar conclusions. This means a solution with the fewest assumptions, not the simplest answer, is usually correct.
16Haile Selassie I
Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia adopted 40 Armenian Orphans from a monastery in Jerusalem in 1924 and trained them to play musical instruments. They became members of Ethiopia's first Official orchestra.
17. There is a third world trade center tower (China World Trade Center Tower III) in China that looks exactly like the ones in New York.
18. The Supersonic airliner Concorde could burn up to 2 tonnes of fuel just to taxi to the runway, however, once at Mach 2 it was the most fuel efficient engine ever built.
19. Sir George Everest, after whom Mount Everest was named, objected to the honor, as he had nothing to do with the mountain's discovery and he had the impression his name was not easily written or pronounced in Hindi.
20. A pregnant American black bear can give birth without ever emerging from hibernation. She doesn’t even need to rouse herself to care for her young. Instead, she can nurse her cubs for months by drawing from her reserves of stored fat.
21Jakarta
Jakarta is sinking 25cm (10 inches) per year, in part due to excessive use of groundwater and lack of piped water. It is expected that the city will be completely submerged in the next 30 years.
22. In 2003, the Chi-Chi's restaurant chain was hit with the largest hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history, with at least 4 deaths and 660 other victims a month after filing for bankruptcy.
23. The American Prairie Reserve is a project initiative that is privately purchasing large swaths of land out in the Great Plains of America and converting it into what will hopefully be the largest nature reserve in the continental U.S.
24. Tea used to be consumed only as medicine in England, but when people saw the Portuguese queen drinking tea regularly, it became popular there too.
25. Before he died in 1998, Chinese President Yang Shangkun told his army doctor that the Tiananmen crackdown on June 4 had been the most serious mistake committed by the Communist Party in its history.
