1Carl Sagan
In 1969, Carl Sagan authored an essay detailing his personal experience with cannabis under the pseudonym "Mr. X". The identity of Mr. X wasn't revealed until after Sagan's death in 1996.
2. Boxer Tony Galento would avoid bathing before a fight so he could distract opponents with his body odor.
3. Paul Revere was one of America's first orthodontists and used walrus teeth as dental implants. The walrus teeth were later helpful for identifying the corpses of his patients that were killed in the Revolutionary war.
4. The Soyuz 23 Soviet spacecraft had an unlucky voyage in that it unintentionally “splashed-down” in a frozen lake. The crew of two spent 9 hours in the cabin waiting to be lifted out of the water, and an additional two hours before the responders realized they were alive inside.
5. Many ancient Romans loved their dogs and would not only have them depicted in jewelry, but also make graves for them with personal epitaphs. One read, "To Helena, foster child, soul without comparison and deserving of praise."
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6Honey
Honey doesn’t spoil. You could feasibly eat 3000-year-old honey.
7. The severe pain from platypus venom can be felt for years, sometimes decades, and does not always respond to painkillers such as morphine.
8. The Cottingley Fairies were two girls who convinced the world in the 1920s that Fairies existed with staged photographs. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the least-foolable detective Sherlock Holmes was convinced they were real and promoted the findings for years.
9. Albert Einstein didn't know how to swim, but he refused to wear a lifejacket. He was always running his boat aground because he was so busy relaxing that he didn’t look to see where he was going. His family was convinced that if he didn’t drown, he’d get his head smashed by the masts and spars.
10. Children can have permanent neurological damages from neglect and abuse caused by the constant increased cortisol and adrenaline in their bloodstreams in those states. It is called Toxic Stress Syndrome.
11Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 6 and he graduated high school as a functional illiterate, relying on his sister for help with schoolwork. He was in movies like Taps and Risky Business before learning to read in 1986 when he became a Scientologist, the year Top Gun was released.
12. The orbit of Mercury follows a unique pattern different from other planets which remained unexplained until Einstein’s theory of bending space-time due to large nearby gravitation. Previous theory was there was another planet between mercury and the sun, Vulcan.
13. Veery, a small bird in the Thrush family, is better at predicting upcoming Atlantic hurricane seasons than our best meteorological models.
14. The Eiffel Tower grows in summer. When it gets hot, the iron expands due to the heat and shrinks again in the winter. It grows by 6 inches each summer.
15. During the carving of Mount Rushmore, there were zero fatalities as a result of accidents. That is 14 years (1927-1941) of carving and dynamite blasts without a death.
16Attila the Hun
After Attila the Hun died, his soldiers plucked out the hair of their heads and made their faces hideous with deep wounds, so that the great warrior should not be mourned by effeminate wailings and tears, but by the blood of men.
17. In old Nokia phones, the notification tone for an SMS was simply 'SMS' in Morse.
18. Napoleon Bonaparte had a healthy obsession with Australia his whole life. Had he won at Waterloo he intended to name part of Australia “Terre Napoléon” (Napoleon Land) and brought back more than 200 species of Australian flora and fauna to France, making Josephiné the first person in history to breed black swans.
19. Despite making up less than 0.1% of the prison population, The Aryan Brotherhood is responsible for between 18-25% of all murders in the US federal prison system.
20. American actor George Clooney is one of the closest living relatives of American president Abraham Lincoln.
21Fake degrees
In 2004, Trinity Southern University in Texas was sued for allegedly selling fake degrees after investigators were able to obtain a fake college degree for their cat.
22. During the Bosnian War, a former Danish Special Forces officer named Helge Meyer used his 1979 Camaro to go through the front lines during the Bosnian War to deliver humanitarian aid. The US Air Force helped modify the Camaro by adding kevlar panels, reconnaissance and stealth tech.
23. During the Vietnam War, USA tried to weaponize the religious beliefs of the Vietnamese. They believed anyone improperly buried would wander the earth in agony. So the US army played horrifying sounds of a wailing Vietnamese man over the jungle at night as part of a Psychological operations campaign.
24. William Atherton who plays the lawyer Walter Peck in Ghostbusters was so hated that after the movie came out he was harassed on the street and challenged to fights in bars.
25. Bhagat Singh Thind, the first Sikh member of the US Army gained US citizenship in 1918 and was stripped of it 4 days later for being Indian. The Supreme Court ruled against him in his second attempt. He succeeded in his third attempt.
