87 Neutral Facts About the Land of Chocolates – Switzerland

Changing another country's weather is classed as a war crime under the Geneva convention.

52. The Geneva Convention requires POWs to have access to tobacco.

53. According to the Geneva Convention, knowingly firing at a medic wearing clear insignia is a war crime.

54. In 1997, physicists at the University of Geneva sent photons seven miles in opposite directions and demonstrated that interfering with one provoked an instantaneous response in the other.

55. In 2014, a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines plane was headed to Switzerland, but had to be intercepted by French/Italian fighter jets because the Swiss Air force doesn't work on nights and weekends.

The longest reigning empress of Austria (Empress Elisabeth of Austria) was assassinated in 1898 in Geneva. Her assassin initially wanted to kill the Duke of Orleans but missed his chance, and simply decided to kill the next member of the royal family he saw.

57. There is a giant three-legged chair in Geneva, Switzerland dedicated to the opposition of landmines.

58. Kim Jong Un studied in Bern with a fake identity.

59.  If Los Angeles and San Francisco areas combined into a country it would have the 15th biggest economy at $1.2 trillion. Bigger than Sweden and Switzerland combined.

60. The famous Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water" is about a casino/concert hall on Lake Geneva, Switzerland that burned down during a Frank Zappa show. Deep Purple witnessed the fire (and rescue efforts) from across the street, then wrote a song about the incident.

Swiss cheese is not a product of Switzerland, but rather an American invention mimicking Emmental.

62. There is a bar in Switzerland designed by H.R. Giger, creator of the terrifying life forms and their otherworldly environment in the film classic Alien.

63. Australia, Great Britain, and Switzerland are the only countries to send a team to every Olympic Games since their inception in 1896.

64. Getting a computer to generate a random number is so fiendishly difficult, one of the solutions involves connecting the web to radioactive material located in Switzerland

65. Billionaire Marc Rich was indicted on 65 criminal counts including the biggest tax evasion in history at that time. He fled to Switzerland and remained on the FBI's 10 Most-Wanted for years, narrowly evading FBI capture in Britain, Germany, Finland, & Jamaica.

A bar of soap made from the fat of Silvio Berlusconi sold for $18,000 at an art fair in Switzerland.

67. Swiss apartment dwellers can get stickers to put on their mailboxes to indicate which household items they can lend to their neighbors.

68. You can prove your right to vote in Switzerland by showing your sword.

69. There is a lawyer named Antoine Goetschel in Switzerland who represents animals in court. He has even prosecuted a fisherman for taking too long to catch a Pike.

70. In 1976, William Bradford Bishop murdered his wife, 3 kids & mother with a sledgehammer and then disappeared. Placed on the FBI most wanted list in 2014, there have been credible sightings of him in Sweden, Italy & Switzerland. A former soldier & State Department employee, he speaks 5 languages.

The Taichung Power Plant in Taiwan releases as much CO2 into the air each year as the entire country of Switzerland.

72. Goldfish crackers come from Switzerland.

73. Switzerland Legalised Home-Grown Cannabis to Curb Illegal sale.

74. Every 1000 years there are giant tsunamis on Switzerland's fresh water lakes.

75. At the mouth of the Amazon River, there's an island nearly the size of Switzerland.