Beyond Belief: 27 Bizarre Facts That Sound Like Fiction

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1Antonio López de Santa Anna

Antonio López de Santa Anna

In 1838, General Antonio López de Santa Anna (President of Mexico) had his leg amputated after his ankle was destroyed by cannon fire. He ordered a full military burial for it.


2. In 1774, two London doctors formed an institution to treat drowning victims. Victims were treated by inserting an enema tube with rubber tubing attachments into their rectum and blowing smoke into it. ‘Smoke Enemas’ were provided by volunteer medical assistants called ‘Pipe Smoker London Medics.’


3. Twins Amy and Katie Jones-Elliott were born 87 days apart, which is the longest interval of any twins being born. Amy was born 4 months early and doctors decided that Katie would stand a better chance of survival in her mother's womb.


4. The demand for human teeth for dentures was so high in the early 1800s that after the battle of Waterloo, looters scavenged teeth from the dead soldiers on the battlefield. The teeth were stolen in such high numbers that sets of these dentures became known as "Waterloo Teeth."


5. The human brain has been shrinking, not getting larger, and has already lost a chunk the size of a tennis ball compared to our ancestors of 20,000 years ago. If the pattern continues it should shrink to the size of the Homo Erectus brain.


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6Newborn babies

Newborn babies

Newborn babies cry without tears until they are 1-3 months old.


7. Anglo-Zanzibar War was the shortest war fought in history. It was fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar in 1896 and lasted 38 to 45 minutes. At 09.02 British ships started a bombardment of the sultan's palace which ended at 09.40. 500 Zanzibaris were killed, but only one British sailor was injured.


8. Among the many animal cries used for the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, the velociraptors were recordings of mating tortoises.


9. Cows do have different accents. They will moo different depending on which region of the world they come from.


10. An average person produces about 25,000 quarts of saliva in a lifetime, enough to fill two swimming pools.


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11Octopus

Octopus

An octopus has three hearts, nine brains, and blue blood. Two hearts pump blood to the gills, while a third circulates it to the rest of the body. The nervous system includes a central brain and a large ganglion at the base of each arm which controls movement.


12. Some turtles can breathe through their butts. Up to 68% of the turtle Rheodytes leukops oxygen uptake is accomplished through the cloacal bursae, so it rarely needs to come to the surface to bask or breathe.


13. Roman Emperor Caligula appointed his horse (Incitatus) as a senator not because he was insane, but to humiliate the Senate.


14. In 2011, China banned Time Travel films due to it being disrespectful of the history or implying the idea of changing reality.


15. In the 1950s, the most reliable and fastest pregnancy test was to expose female toads to the woman's urine. If the woman was pregnant, elevated levels of the hormone hCG would cause the toad to develop eggs within 24 hours.


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16Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar had an affair with the sister (Servilii Caepiones) of his political rival to needle him. Her son and son in law later became lead conspirators in the plot to assassinate Caesar.


17. Adam Rainer was born a dwarf (measuring 4'8" at the age of 19) and died a giant (measuring 7'8'' at the age of 51). He is the only person in history to have been classified as both.


18. Nikola Tesla openly expressed disgust for overweight people. Once, he fired his secretary solely because of her weight.


19. Edgar Allan Poe's cause of death is a mystery. A few nights before he ultimately died he was found wandering incoherently, wearing clothes that were not his own and calling out the name "Reynolds."


20. Cows have best friends and get stressed when separated.


21Joseph Pujol

Joseph Pujol

Joseph Pujol was a professional farter and highest paid performer at the Moulin Rouge. For his grand finale, he would play “La Marseillaise” through his anus and then blow out candles from yards away. Corseted women in the audience were known to pass out from laughter.


22. Joseph Stalin hired people to edit photographs throughout his reign. People who became his enemy were removed from every photograph pictured with him. Sometimes, Stalin would even insert himself in photos at key moments in history or had technicians make him look taller in them.


23. The Guinness World Record for highest fall without a parachute is held by Vesna Vulovic, a Serbian flight attendant who was the only survivor after a bomb went off on a commercial flight over Czechoslovakia in 1972. She fell 10,160 meters (33,330 feet) and recovered fully aside from a small limp.


24. There is a fish called Lungfish that can live out of water for many months in burrows of hardened mud beneath a dried-up stream bed.


25. Concerned about the number of cobras in Delhi, British colonial officials created a bounty, only to discover secret cobra farms created to collect the bounty. When the officials shut down the program the farms released their snakes, meaning they had far more cobras than before they started.

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