84 Efficient Facts About Germany That’ll Surprise You

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51Friedrich's Engels

Friedrich's Engels

In 1888, Friedrich Engels wrote that Germany’s next war will be a world war, “eight to ten million soldiers will massacre one another” and “the devastations of the Thirty Years’ War” will be “compressed into three or four years, and spread over the whole Continent.”


52. When the Romans returned from France and Germany with blonde slaves, some Roman women tried copying their look by dying their hair blond, only for it to fall out. Instead, the women cut off the slave’s hair to use them as wigs.


53. In Cologne, Germany it is common to donate your used Christmas trees to the local zoo. An elephant can eat up to 3 of these trees a day and can also use them to clean their teeth.


54. In 1921, workers at an ammonium nitrate factory in Germany tried clearing a clogged silo with dynamite. The resulting explosion killed 500 people and left 6500 homeless.


55. Pumpernickel means “devil's fart.” Originating in Germany, the bread was called that due to the digestive problems that many people experience from eating it.


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56Pets

Pets

Americans spend more money on pets yearly than Germany spends on its entire defense budget.


57. Hebrew essentially died between 200 and 400 CE, and was revived in 19th century Germany, now having about 9 million speakers.


58. Some Syrian rebels are now using the Sturmgwehr 44, an assault rifle produced in Nazi Germany in late WW2 and which can be worth up to $30,000 in the USA.


59. Africans in Nazi Germany had a better chance of surviving than Germans since they were excluded from the military due to their non-Aryan status but also were not segregated/incarcerated.


60. 3 men whom broke into a luxury store in Germany and ran off with $6.8M worth of jewelry. They left behind a piece of evidence, sweat. DNA analysis led to not one but two suspects- identical twins. They couldn't determine from which one. They went free.


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61Bullet in his skull

Bullet in his skull

In 2010, a Polish man living in Germany asked doctors to remove what he thought was a several-year-old cyst at the back of his head. However, doctors found that the “cyst” was actually a .22-caliber round lodged in his scalp. He didn’t notice it because he was drunk


62. There are hundreds of thousands of unexploded Allied bombs in Germany. An average of 15 bombs is discovered daily.


63. In 1981, a tenant was evicted in Germany after spreading Surströmming (fermented Baltic Sea herring) brine in the stairway. The landlord was taken to court, where he brought a can of Surströmming as evidence. After being opened, the court unanimously ruled in his favor because of the smell.


64. In Germany (and other parts of Europe) there are brass plaques set on the sidewalks in front of the former homes of people who fell victim to German Nazism.


65. Albert Einstein was among 5,000 plus individuals who signed a petition to overturn Germany’s ban on Homosexuality.


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66Moe Berg

Moe Berg

During World War II, USA sent former major league baseball catcher and OSS agent Moe Berg to attend a lecture from Dr. Heisenberg. Berg was armed with a pistol and had orders to shoot Dr. Heisenberg if his lecture indicated that Germany was close to completing an atomic bomb.


67. In the 1960s, Germany decided to retroactively pay pensions to African soldiers that served in the imperial colonial army. Claimants were handed a broom and ordered in German to perform the manual of arms. Not one of them failed the test.


68. The streets in Northeast Minneapolis were named after the U.S. presidents in order of their election to help new residents from Poland, Ukraine, Lebanon, and Germany prepare for citizenship exams.


69. In Hamburg, Germany, there is a Food Additives Museum dedicated to the emulsifiers, stabilizers, dyes, thickeners, preservatives, and flavorings in our everyday foods. The exhibit explains the history and current landscape of food additives in an informational rather than political way.


70. Many of the actors who played the Nazis in Casablanca (1942) were, in fact, German Jews who had escaped from Nazi Germany.


71Beer purity law

Beer purity law

There is a 500-year-old Beer Purity Law still in effect in Germany. It was decreed on April 23, 1516, by Munich’s Duke Wilhelm, protecting the country’s beer drinkers from contaminants, chemicals and any other additives that unsavory merchants might have thought of adding.


72. Nazi Germany stockpiled huge quantities of nerve gas during World War II. It was ultimately never used since Hitler was told (incorrectly) that the Allies had their own supply of nerve agents.


73. East Germany created its own cola drink. Vita-Cola’s sales almost disappeared after the fall of the Berlin Wall brought Coke and Pepsi into the East. It is still the most popular cola in Thuringia, making the German state one of the few places in the world where Coca-Cola is not the leader.


74. Germany passed a legislation in 1985 that made it illegal to deny the existence of the Holocaust


75. Syphilis had been called the "French disease" in Italy, Poland and Germany, the "Italian disease" in France, the "Spanish disease" by the Dutch, the "Polish disease" by Russians, and the Turks called it the "Christian disease."

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