26Permian Mass Extinction
All life on the Earth currently is descended from the 4% that survived the Permian mass extinction.
27. Timothy the tortoise served as a mascot on HMS Queen during the bombardment of Sevastopol in 1854. She was, until her death in 2004, the last surviving witness to the Crimean war.
28. Dogs have slits on the outside of each nostril, which allows them to exhale without disturbing the scent particles in front of his nose. Breathing out the side slits helps release air while holding scent particles in the nostrils so that a dog isn't as likely to lose a scent.
29. The classic peace symbol is based on the semaphore signal for N and D, which stands for Nuclear Disarmament.
30. Ernst Leitz, the founder of Leica camera, smuggled Jews out of Germany by giving them jobs overseas and he gave each one a camera as a symbol of freedom.
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31Lord of the Rings
In order to explore and exploit economic benefits from The Lord of the Rings movies, New Zealand's government appointed a "Minister of Lord of the Rings" to their cabinet.
32. Benjamin Lay was an 18th century Quaker vegetarian abolitionist who once kidnapped the child of slaveholders temporarily, to show them how Africans felt when their relatives were sold overseas.
33. The family of 110-year-old Reg Dean attributed his long life to someone in India, who before World War 1 gave him a muddy Elixir and told him "drink this and you'll live till at least 100".
34. The difference between hardwood and softwood has to do with how they reproduce, not the hardness of the wood, and that balsa wood - one of the softest woods - is a hardwood.
35. There have been suggestions to teach the NATO phonetic alphabet to all medical professionals, in order to avoid accidental deaths due to miscommunication.
