1Elena Ceaușescu
The wife of Communist Romania's leader (Elena Ceaușescu) was barely literate but was able to obtain a Ph.D. in Chemistry from plagiarism.
2. Putting a flash drive into water does not render it useless. It is only when the USB is wet and then plugged into any device that gives it power, does it short out.
3. Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, thousands of visitors would line up each Sunday for a brief word of advice or blessing from him. He would give each person a dollar to give to charity, because of his grandfather's belief that when two people meet, it should benefit a third".
4. In 2016, Sweden officially declared Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat that led many rescue missions during World War 2 dead after being missing for 71 years.
5. Dublin hosts a Women's Mini Marathon annually as a charity event, and men will dress in drag to join the race.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Midwife
Men who work as midwives are called 'accoucheurs.' This is usually only when their gender has to be specified, otherwise, they are also called 'midwives.'
7. The reason why the Ancient One from the Dr. Strange movie was played by a Caucasian (Celtic) person rather than an Asian (Tibetan) person was because if it was otherwise, there was a risk the movie would have been banned in China. That's a big market they would lose if banned.
8. Most of the background characters in SpongeBob have names
9. Anyone can apply for observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope regardless of nationality or academic affiliation. Competition is extremely intense though and people who apply need to prove the value of their "telescope time"
10. People who eat spicy foods tend to live longer, according to a 2015 study
11Spider silk
One attempt to synthesize spider silk consisted of transferring the gene to goats. The goats’ milk then contained the spider silk protein.
12. A newspaper editor, Samuel Clemens, challenged a rival editor to a duel. Since he was bad at shooting and he feared death, a friend, and some luck helped him to bluff his way out making the opponent declining the fight. He survived and later became a novelist: his pen name was Mark Twain
13. The Texas City disaster of 1947 is generally considered to be the worst industrial accident in U.S. history and resulted in nearly 600 fatalities. One of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever, it was thought to have been caused by nothing more than a discarded cigarette.
14. The USS New York's bow stem includes 7.5 tons of steel from the World Trade Center.
15. Idaho has no real etymology, it was just randomly made up by this guy named George M. Willing
16Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton believed colors of the rainbow were analogous to notes on the 7note musical scale. In his diagrams of colors and equivalent notes, he added orange & indigo as half steps on the scale. It is unclear if those colors had been observed or if Newton added them to better fit his analogy.
17. The film 'Vanilla Sky' is a remake of a film made only four years earlier, 'Open Your Eyes'. Penélope Cruz plays the same character is both versions too.
18. Al Capone helped start the trend of expiration dates on bottles of milk.
19. A 2014 Canadian study showed that cyclists were actually more likely to be involved in an accident if they were wearing reflective clothing at night
20. India writes 1,00,00,000 instead of 10,000,000 when counting currency.
21Dummy Taylor
There was a renowned deaf-mute baseball player in the early 20th century named "Dummy" Taylor. He was the highest paid deaf person of the 1900's and was also known as the comedian of the Giants, coaching at third base in rubber boots when an umpire refused to call a game due to rain.
22. The Eternal September is a term that refers to the month when Usenet experienced a large influx of AOL users... the network's existing culture couldn't integrate the sheer number of new users, and according to pre-1993 users, never fully recovered
23. The first recipient (Hal Finney) of a bitcoin transaction was using his amassed fortune from the cryptocurrency to fund the cryogenic preservation of his body. He died in 2014 from ALS.
24. The jets extending from slow-motion Nuclear Explosions are the tower's support cables being vaporized by x-rays before the shockwave even hits.
25. Blue Smarties were not removed from circulation for making kids hyper, but instead because when Nestle was replacing artificial dyes with natural ones, no natural dye could be found which would make smarties blue
