50 Surprising Facts About Common Professions You Didn’t Know

Draco was an Athenian lawyer who gave the city its first written code. The word Draconian originated from his name as his laws were so brutal. According to legend, he died due to his popularity. After giving a speech at a theatre, he was smothered when the audience threw their cloaks at him.

27. In 2012, an Indian nurse looking after the Duchess of Cambridge was prank-called by an Australian radio station pretending to be the Queen. This led to her revealing confidential information which was then broadcast on the radio. 3 days later, she committed suicide by hanging.

28. The first firemen to respond to the Chernobyl meltdown stood above the burning core, which emitted radiation at 30,000 roentgen per hour. When they died a few weeks later, their bodies were so radioactive they were buried in coffins made of lead with the lids welded shut.

29. Executives at McGraw Hill were curious to find out why their accountant was on television racing a McLaren F1 GTR, chartering Concorde trips and showing up to work in a Ferrari. Turns out he had been embezzling £2.8 million from them the past 5 years since he was recruited.

30. Colin Murdoch was a New Zealand pharmacist who made a number of significant inventions, in particular the tranquilizer gun, the disposable hypodermic syringe, and the child-proof medicine containers.

In the mid-19th century, a fight between clowns and firemen blew up into a full-scale riot and led to the entire Toronto police force losing their jobs.

32. There was a spate of waiters poisoning poor tippers in Chicago in 1918.

33. Mercenary “Mad” Mike Hoare was also a chartered accountant. Even after leading two coups in Africa, the association said it could not expel him despite protests from members as he had committed no offense. He was finally expelled after going to prison for his third coup, upsetting him deeply.

34. June 2nd is observed as International Whores' Day or International Sex Workers’ Day. The event commemorates the occupation of Église Saint-Nizier in Lyon by more than a hundred sex workers on June 2, 1975, to draw attention to their inhumane working conditions.

35. Roughly 100 firefighter arsonists are convicted every year in North America and all of them are serial arsonists.

The Japanese have a word for workers who have been “overworked to death,” which is 'karoshi.' The most common causes of karoshi deaths are heart attacks or strokes due to stress and a starvation diet. Mental stress can also cause karoshi through workers taking their own lives.

37. After South Park aired the episode Chef Aid, the term 'Chewbacca Defense' entered the legal lexicon. The legal strategy aims to deliberately confuse juries than refute cases. The practice was widely used by lawyers before the episode, but South Park gave it a term.

38. Pharmacists in France have been trained in mycology, so foragers take the mushrooms they have gathered to their pharmacist where, free of charge, the mushrooms are checked for toxicity.

39. Teachers in Luxembourg are the best paid in the world, with a starting salary of 73,300€ ($79,920) going up to 128,200€ ($138,920) per year.

40. When a firefighter gets injured and hasn’t moved for a set amount of time, a PASS device will emit an audible alarm of at least 95db. The purpose of this is to notify other firefighters in the vicinity to rescue the injured firefighter.

10s of farmers die each year from grain entrapment, which is when a person is partially or fully submerged in grain, and cannot get out without assistance. In 2019, 67 incidents of grain entrapment took place, of which 39 were fatal.

42. French veterinarian and microbiologist Gaston Ramon was nominated for the Nobel Prize 155 times between 1930 and 1953 but never won any, making him the most nominated individual to miss out on the award.

43. In England and Wales, the role of a lawyer is divided into two. Solicitors provide legal advice, barristers argue in court, and clerks are middlemen between the two.

44. James Murray Spangler (1848–1915) was a salesman and janitor, who invented the first commercially successful portable electric vacuum cleaner that revolutionized household carpet cleaning. His device was the first to use both a cloth filter bag and cleaning attachments. His invention was patented in 1908.

45. The Code of Hammurabi decreed that bartenders who watered down their beers would be executed.

You are guaranteed a lawyer if you cannot afford one (in the U.S.) because a poor man was convicted unjustly, began reading law in prison, and wrote the Supreme Court, saying that he should have been given a lawyer despite his lack of money. He was retried and acquitted.

47. There are established methods for how waiters and waitresses use their hands and the digits of the hands to carry multiple plates in restaurants.

48. Psychologist László Polgár theorized that any child could become a genius in a chosen field with early training. As an experiment, he trained his daughters in chess from age 4. All three went on to become chess prodigies, and the youngest, Judit, is considered the best female player in history.

49. The practice of worker's compensation has its origins in 18th-century piracy. A system of compensation was established as a result of the occupation's high risk of injury and included payments for different types of injuries as well as giving crewmates less strenuous duties when injured.

50. Julia Morgan was the first woman to be admitted to the architecture program at l'École Nationale Supérieure Des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the first woman architect licensed in California. She became William Randolph Hearst's principal architect, working on Hearst Castle from 1919 to 1947.