41 Cool Facts About Mexico’s History, Culture, Heritage & Its People

A man named Wenseslao Moguel was sentenced to death by firing squad for taking part in the Mexican Revolution. He was shot 9 times and took one final shot to the head to ensure his death. He survived the ordeal.

2. The most popular version of the Mexican song La Cucaracha is about a cockroach that can’t walk because it doesn’t have marijuana to smoke. This version was sung by Poncho Villa’s troops in battle during the Mexican Revolution.

3. By 1991, the air in Mexico City had become so contaminated with fecal dust from humans that it was possible to contract hepatitis by simply breathing outdoors.

4. Torre Mayor in Mexico City is one of the strongest buildings on Earth. It was designed to withstand earthquakes measuring 8.5 on the Richter Scale. Occupants inside at the time of the 2003 earthquake did not even know that a 7.6 earthquake had occurred.

5. Mexican shamans began to use Coca-Cola in their religious rituals to heal worshippers. When PepsiCo discovered this, they offered commissions to shamans for using Pepsi instead. When Coca-Cola began paying too, rival religious groups were formed based on which soft drink they used.

In 2000, a Mexican woman named Inés Ramírez was forced to resort to self-surgery, a Caesarean section because of a lack of medical assistance during difficult labor. She took 3 shots of hard liquor, then performed the surgery herself with a kitchen knife. Despite having no medical training, the operation was successful and both she and her baby survived.

7. Magdalena Solis was a Mexican prostitute who was paid to imitate an Incan goddess as part of a scam. She then began to genuinely believe she was a goddess, took over the cult, and started sacrificing her followers.

8. During the excavations for a subway line in Mexico City in 2010, construction workers found 500-year-old skeletons of roughly 50 Aztec children and 10 adults, as well as numerous artifacts dating back to as far as 2000 B.C.

9. The Green Angels is a group of Mexican government-funded roadside assistance professionals. In addition to fixing mechanical problems, they can perform life-sustaining treatments and help tourists seek shelter from crime, among other free services.

10. In the Mexican state of Chiapas, Coca-Cola is easier to find than bottled water. This has led to a diabetes epidemic which increased by 30% between 2013 and 2016. Diabetes is now the second-leading cause of death after heart disease there.

In 1907, a Mexican railroad brakeman named Jesus Garcia saved the entire town of Nacozari, Sonora by singlehandedly driving a damaged and burning train containing dynamite six kilometers away from the town before it finally exploded, killing him.

12. Scientists in Mexico turned tequila into diamonds by heating a cheap shot to 800 degrees Celsius. At that temperature, it vaporized and broke down into its atomic constituents, producing a fine layer of carbon crystal structures identical to diamonds on nearby metal trays.

13. In Mexico City, people were offered free wi-fi in exchange for picking up dog droppings and weighing them, thus measuring the amount of free wi-fi given, in an attempt to clean up the city from dog poo.

14. A Mexican woman named Julia Pastrana was toured around the world as "the bear woman". When she died in childbirth in 1860 her husband had her embalmed and continued touring. Her remains ended up in the basement of the University of Oslo. In 2013, she was finally laid to rest in Mexico.

15. The Cave of Swallows in Mexico is the largest cave shaft in the world, being almost 1,000 feet wide at the bottom and 1,100 feet deep, and it's home of many birds, but despite its name, almost no swallows.

In 2016, an indigenous Mexican woman named María Lorena Ramírez from the Tarahumara community won a 50 km ultramarathon featuring 500 runners from 12 countries while wearing a skirt and sandals made from tire rubber.

17. After an 8.0 magnitude earthquake hit Mexico City in 1985, nearly all newborn babies survived a collapsed hospital. They were nicknamed “Miracle Babies” for surviving 7 days without nourishment, water, warmth, or human contact.

18. A Mexican priest became a Lucha Libre wrestler named Fray Tormenta in order to raise money to support the orphanage he founded. When he retired, one of the children from the orphanage took up his mantle so that the legend of Fray Tormenta can live on.

19. The Tijuana International Airport in Mexico lies along the U.S. border and even includes a terminal on the U.S. side, making it the only airport to have terminals in two countries.

20. Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula has no rivers, lakes, or streams. The Maya relied on the flooded mouths of underwater caves, called cenotes, for all of their freshwaters.

On October 2, 1968, 5000 soldiers surrounded and opened fire on 10,000 students, bystanders, and children in Mexico City. They were protesting government actions and previous incidents just weeks before the Olympic Opening Ceremony in Mexico City. The body count is still argued to this day.

22. A Mexican drug lord named Carrillo Fuentes tried to get plastic surgery to avoid capture but died during the operation. The bodies of his surgeons were found mutilated and encased in concrete four months later.

23. The "PPDG" penthouse in Guadalajara, Mexico, has a toilet with a glass floor looking into a 15-story elevator shaft. The building used to be an old Mexican colonial building and was supposed to have 2 elevator shafts. The second elevator was never installed.

24. In 1982, Mexican President José López Portillo made a speech asking for forgiveness over his mistakes as President and the economic crisis. He famously broke in tears during his speech after asking for the forgiveness of Mexico's poor. This passionate speech, however, did little to repair his image, and he remains one of the most unpopular Mexican presidents in recent history.

25. The Giant crystal cave in Mexico, with crystals weighing up to 50 tons, has an average of 100% humidity and 58°C temperature. This means that the coldest place in the cave was the lungs, so water would condense in it, and exposure for over 10 minutes would lead to death by drowning.