26 Bob the Builder in Japan
Bob the Builder was altered for Japanese children so they wouldn’t confuse him for a Yakuza member.
27. During the Gulf War, an American F-15 dropped a bomb through an enemy helicopter that was attacking friendly forces.
28. Sidney Lewis was 12 years old when he enlisted to fight in World War I, after lying about his age. He fought in the Battle of the Somme at age 13, before his mother revealed his true age and brought him back home.
29. The city of Los Angeles pays more for parking enforcement and writing tickets than the parking tickets themselves generate in revenue for the city.
30. In 2016, a Delaware teen named Cindy Redmond developed hyperacusis after an airhorn was blasted near her ear. Her type of hyperacusis makes her so sensitive to sound that it hurts, causing her to drop out of school because the voices of teachers were too painful. She also needs special noise-canceling headphones while outside.
31 Colosseum’s Medieval Inhabitants
In Medieval Rome, the Colosseum housed hundreds of people living inside its walls, rented out by a nearby convent that maintained the ruins. It had a network of sewage pipes, horse stables, and people even built new walls for their homes.
32. Blackjack has a house advantage of only around 1-2% for skilled players and up to 20% for unskilled players. On the other hand, craps has a house advantage of less than 1% for skilled players and up to around 16% for unskilled players.
33. A Serbian vodka, at 88% alcohol, comes with 13 health warnings, including one in braille.
34. A scientific journal first rejected Peter Higgs’s original paper predicting the existence of the Higgs boson as having “no obvious relevance to physics.”
35. The average American buys 53 new pieces of clothing each year.
36 Kubrick’s Cut ‘Shining’ Scene
A week into the general run of the movie ‘The Shining,’ Kubrick cut a scene at the end that took place in a hospital, where it was explained that Jack’s body couldn’t be found. The projectionists physically cut the scene out of print and sent it back to the studio.
37. In 1969, North Korea shot down a U.S. surveillance aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board. The U.S. did not retaliate at all.
38. Drinking heavy water and alcohol together cancels out vertigo. If not heavy water, then glycerol works too.
39. China does not recognize international time zones within its borders. The entire country uses China Standard Time, which is aligned with Beijing Time.
40. On April 6, 1994, the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were both assassinated when their plane was shot down. In Burundi, it was seen as a tragic accident, with their president in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Rwanda, it set in motion the Rwandan Genocide.
41 WWI Anti-German Language
When America joined World War I, they set about purging their language of German words. They rechristened sauerkraut as “liberty cabbage,” hamburger as “liberty steak,” and German measles as “liberty measles.”
42. Eunuchs assassinated Han official He Jin in 189 A.D., prompting furious troops led by Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu to set the palace on fire, slaughtering any males without facial hair. Young men had to expose themselves to prevent misidentification as eunuchs and subsequent death.
43. Scarlett Johansson ultimately didn’t get the lead role in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” because director David Fincher thought she could provoke enough lust to distract the audience from the film itself.
44. In 2015, Polish soccer player Robert Lewandowski substituted into a Bundesliga game and scored five goals in less than nine minutes, breaking four Guinness World Records in the process.
45. Photographer Ralph Morse took the pictures of Einstein’s office right after his death, using a bottle of scotch as a bribe to get into the room.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 Joan of Arc Retrial
25 years after her burning at the stake, a retrial declared Joan of Arc innocent of heresy.
47. In 2021, the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival in Saudi Arabia disqualified over 40 camels from a beauty contest for receiving botox injections.
48. On James Cameron’s third dive to the Titanic, he and his pilot had a “near-death experience.” They encountered a sandstorm on the ocean floor and became temporarily stuck there with a low power supply and few batteries. It took them three attempts from the bottom to rise above 25 meters and surface five hours later.
49. Turtles and tortoises have nerve endings in their shells. They can sense your touch on their shells and experience pain when something damages their shells.
50. After ABC executives and producers encouraged Margaret Cho to go on a crash diet while filming her TV series “All-American Girl” in 1994, she lost 30 lbs (14 kg) in two weeks. This resulted in her being hospitalized for kidney failure, which led to major health issues that persisted for years after the show.
RE: Fact #6 (Australian Survives Wildfire Dive) – He said, “I held my mask and just jumped right into the pool. Then I just stayed on the bottom, looking up at the red and black swirling above me.”
RE: Fact #43 (Johansson Loses Lead Role) – Yeah, Lisbet’s not supposed to be all that hot, so that makes sense. She’s described as kind of plain and doesn’t have any curves, which is the opposite of ScarJo.
Also, I don’t think she can pull off a really mean look, which is kind of important.
Rooney Mara just seemed like the perfect fit for the part, you know?
I wasn’t a fan of how she played Lisbeth. I thought the Swedish movie nailed it.
And Noomi Rapace is awesome.
RE: Fact #34 (Higgs Boson Paper Rejected) – It was pretty emotional seeing him cry when they shared the experiment results with everyone. Must be amazing to see all your hard work pay off like that. Glad he got to experience that before he passed.
It’s pretty amazing that he got to see his theory proven right before he passed away. He definitely left a big mark on physics.
RE: Fact #3 (Newborns Communicate Through Crying) – It’s like, when they’re little, anything bad that happens, even if it’s super small, is the absolute worst thing ever.
RE: Fact #31 (Colosseum’s Medieval Inhabitants) – Just like Diamond City.
RE: Fact #50 (Margaret Cho’s Crash Diet) – Losing 30 pounds in two weeks is crazy.
So, remember this: with God, anything is possible!
RE: Fact #12 (Domino’s Fails in Italy) – Taco Bell tried to branch out into Mexico a few times, but it didn’t work out.
RE: Fact #41 (WWI Anti-German Language) – Calling it “Liberty measles” makes it sound like people want to get it, not avoid it.
Right? I mean, they should’ve named diseases after Germany. Like, call cancer “German Growths” and renal disease “Kaiser Kidneys,” you know?
RE: Fact #18 (Steve Jobs vs. Android) – Steve Jobs once accused Bill Gates of copying Apple’s design, and Gates said, “Look, Steve, it’s more like we both knew this rich guy Xerox, and you broke in to steal his TV, but I got there first. You can’t say I stole it from you!”
RE: Fact #1 (Employee Skips Work for Years) – He got paid $41,000 a year for six years and only had to pay back $30,000 when they caught him. That’s the most they could legally make him pay. He totally got away with something!
He still pocketed $216,000 even after they caught him. Not bad, considering he didn’t spend it all!
I’d take that deal, even if it meant making less.
41k to do nothing?
Dude’s a legend.
RE: Fact #11 (Dutch Sperm Donor Banned) – Imagine trying to find out about your birth dad and then discovering he has almost 600 kids! That would be a real mind trip.
He said it was 600, not 599. He was traveling all over the place, like, every month for 16 years, so there’s gotta be at least 3,000 kids out there. One clinic in the Netherlands was selling 250 of his donations every month, and he visited 11 clinics just in the Netherlands! Imagine how many kids he has in the world, it’s gotta be tens of thousands, if not more. He’s been to Kenya, the UK, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, the US, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Norway, France, Italy, Germany, Ukraine, Canada, and tons of other places. The crazy thing is, he kept donating even after reaching the limits in each country, so those clinics sold his donations to places he already hit his limit in. It’s a whole mess! The whole sperm bank system is messed up. It’s pretty likely someone reading this will end up marrying one of his kids or grandkids!
He’s a survivor, that’s for sure.
I’ve never donated sperm myself, but do they really use every single donation, or did this guy have something special that made his donations stand out?
They have a group for big donors, and it’s all like, “Oh, we get each other, we’re in this together.” The world is going to get a lot dumber because of this guy.
RE: Fact #28 (Sidney Lewis Fights in WWI) – Picture your mom showing up at the front lines and yanking you by the ear in front of all the other soldiers.
RE: Fact #11 (Dutch Sperm Donor Banned) – Dutch guidelines say a sperm donor shouldn’t have more than 25 kids in 12 families, but this guy has helped create between 550 and 600 kids since he started donating back in 2007!
If he keeps going, he’ll get a €100,000 fine for each time he breaks the rules, plus some extra fines too.
Over 100 of his kids were born at Dutch clinics and some were born privately. He even donated to a Danish clinic called Cryos that sent his stuff to private homes in different countries.
The court said, “This donor lied to parents about how many kids he already had.”
RE: Fact #8 (Firework Tragedy on Fourth) – Damn, that’s rough.
The mom’s saying he thought it was a dud, but he lit it so he probably wasn’t being honest.
Maybe it didn’t go off right away because it was loaded upside down. He might have thought it was a dud, so he moved it and then it exploded.
They probably lit it and it didn’t go off right away, so they thought it was a dud and started messing around with it.
It’s just horrifying to think about rushing in and finding your brother like that, knowing it’s all over.
Sometimes you just hope someone’s already gone, you know?
RE: Fact #2 (Crowe Declines $100M Role) – That’s also why I didn’t play Aragorn in Lord of the Rings.
RE: Fact #37 (North Korea Downs U.S. Plane) – Nixon was totally focused on Vietnam, not even looking at North Korea. North Korea didn’t get nukes until 2006, way later.
It’s wild how the Gulf of Tonkin incident kicked off the Vietnam War, but this whole North Korea thing just… didn’t. History feels so random sometimes, you know?
Apparently, it’s listed as a North Korean win on Wikipedia. I can’t even.
RE: Fact #11 (Dutch Sperm Donor Banned) – It gets way weirder than that. There’s a Netflix doc about him that just came out. He’s been giving money to clinics all over the place, not just in the US. They say 600 kids is a low estimate, it could be thousands.
He says Netflix is twisting the story, which wouldn’t be a surprise. But they interviewed a bunch of families in the doc and I believe what they say.
RE: Fact #24 (Pokémon Card Banned) – Whoa, what are the odds? Three-quarters of the 100 people in today’s tournament share the same birthday! Happy birthday, everyone!
The birthday paradox is pretty mind-blowing.
RE: Fact #6 (Australian Survives Wildfire Dive) – You can easily get two hours of air from a regular scuba tank at 10 feet, even with a full tank. In a wildfire, I’d rather be underwater. It’s a tough call, but I’d choose diving over trying to escape on land with bad conditions any day.
Two hours is pretty short, actually. If you stretch and do some breathing exercises, you could probably double that. It’d be super boring, but definitely better than going up in flames.
Even without the fancy breathing stuff, you could make an 80cu last four hours.
I’d try really hard to focus on meditating, hoping it will help me relax.
I’d be scared to death of running out of air. I’ve tried scuba diving a couple of times and it was cool, but I’d probably freak out before I even got halfway through.
RE: Fact #31 (Colosseum’s Medieval Inhabitants) – That was probably the thing that saved it.
A lot of ancient Roman buildings survived because people lived in them for a long time.
I was in Rome, looking at this old archway, right? And I asked the tour guide why there was this tiny window in the middle. He told me a medieval barber had set up shop there! I couldn’t stop laughing, it was just so strange, but so believable too.
Cities with lots of people usually don’t let big buildings go unused or get torn down.
RE: Fact #41 (WWI Anti-German Language) – “Freedom fries” was just like the whole sauerkraut thing, right? Another silly fad that thankfully faded away.
RE: Fact #35 (Annual Clothing Purchases in U.S.) – Are we counting each sock, or are some people just flying through their clothes way faster than me?
The numbers are probably off because some folks are just hooked on shopping. When I was working at a place that took returns, I’d see the same people coming back every few days with bags of clothes. That was just one place, so they were probably returning stuff to other stores too.
My wife works at this really fancy store, and there’s this one lady who drops like $10,000 every two weeks and has everything shipped to storage units. She’s gotta be messing up the store’s sales figures, you know?
RE: Fact #29 (LA Parking Enforcement Costs) – Parking enforcement is just about making sure there’s room for everyone and that the roads are clear, not about making money.
You know, law enforcement shouldn’t be about making money. That’s just asking for trouble.
RE: Fact #36 (Kubrick’s Cut ‘Shining’ Scene) – He was really into movies that leave you with more questions than answers.
I thought the ending of Eyes Wide Shut was really strong.
He passed away before finishing the movie, so who knows how it would have ended.
The hospital scene wouldn’t make things any clearer. The hotel could make things vanish or pop up out of thin air.
RE: Fact #22 (Reynolds Funds Deadpool Writers) – It’s kind of like what happened with Animal House. They wouldn’t pay for Douglas Kenney to be on set, so John Landis just gave him a small part so he could be there.
Everyone thought the Stork was a bit off.
What are we supposed to do?
George Harrison was a big fan of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. He really wanted it to happen, so he kicked in $3 million to help them make it. He even has a quick little cameo that’s like 15 seconds long.
That’s also why Shane Black has a tiny part in Predator.
RE: Fact #32 (Blackjack and Craps House Edge) – Blackjack with basic strategy usually has a house edge of less than 1%, but it can be as low as 0.40% depending on the rules. Craps with basic strategy and 5x odds gives the house an edge of 0.33%. Basic strategy for craps just means betting the pass line, taking maximum odds, and nothing else.
RE: Fact #23 (Churchill’s Favorite Champagne) – He smoked and drank like crazy and lived to be 90, maybe I need to change my ways.
Some people are just blessed with good genes. Most people who live that hard will die before their 60s, not live to 90.
Classic survivorship bias!
RE: Fact #43 (Johansson Loses Lead Role) – That’s a pretty funny reason to not get a job.
It’s a total nightmare, trust me. It’s like everyone’s staring at me, then there’s this weird silence when I walk in, and all these gross whispers. Thank goodness I wake up before it gets too bad…
She’s just naturally hot, she’s got that Guatemalan vibe. You can’t handle it.
text
She’s basically a mix of Lucy and Ricky.
RE: Fact #40 (Rwandan Genocide Triggered) – It was crazy. Within a day, all the big names in Rwandan politics and journalism were gone, dead or in hiding. And within three months, half a million to eight hundred thousand people were killed. That’s up to eight thousand people a day, killed with just machetes and garden tools.
Thirty years ago, we thought we were all so smart and sophisticated. Guess we haven’t changed much.
RE: Fact #8 (Firework Tragedy on Fourth) – If you’re gonna go out in a fireworks accident, at least do it like hockey goalie Matīss Kivlenieks. He saved his teammate’s wife and unborn child from a stray firework. That’s pretty heroic.
RE: Fact #1 (Employee Skips Work for Years) – Ha, you won’t believe this. This woman, Jill Repman, was on the Buffalo fire department payroll for seven years, but she never actually worked! They put her on leave while they investigated her, but never told her to come back. She just kept getting paid, and ended up making half a million dollars while she worked another job.
RE: Fact #44 (Lewandowski’s Record-Setting Goals) – This guy’s style makes you think he’s just another dude, but he’s actually one of the best strikers ever.
That makes it sound like some guy just won a contest to play for ten minutes.
Bobby, the benchwarmer, got to play because they were out of options. The other strikers were getting taken out one by one, like something out of a horror movie. It was a great day for Germany, and for the world, really.
He was practically just plucked from the crowd.
It was against Wolfsburg, they were super strong in Germany for a couple of years back then. They were really good, pushing Bayern, and the first half was crazy intense. Awesome game! Then Lewandowski just went wild and scored basically every time he touched the ball for like 9 minutes.
Remember that crazy thing that happened back in 2015?
RE: Fact #13 (Jack Kelly’s Olympic Revenge) – Eighty-five years later, his grandson, Albert II, takes the throne as Prince of Monaco. This was just a few years after the women’s quadruple sculls at the Henley Regatta was renamed in honor of Princess Grace.
RE: Fact #42 (Palace Fire and Eunuch Slaughter) – text
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It’s a grower, okay?
RE: Fact #47 (Camel Botox Scandal) – Beauty pageant?
RE: Fact #49 (Turtles Feel Shell Pain) – That barnacle video is kind of weird, but in a good way.
It’d be way more satisfying if they weren’t putting barnacles on the turtles just for the videos, you know?
They must be talking about that sea turtle rescue video, right? Those people aren’t putting barnacles on the turtles.
That’s why they had to put the turtle to sleep in that video.
RE: Fact #22 (Reynolds Funds Deadpool Writers) – Ryan paid BLUR STUDIOS to make a Deadpool demo reel, which got leaked to show studio heads that people really wanted a Deadpool movie, and that it could totally work if they did it right.
RE: Fact #48 (Cameron’s Titanic Dive Peril) – I’ve been in this kind of situation before, even went down to 16,000 feet on another mission.
There are definitely some real dangers down there. But the Mir subs have these weights that are held by magnets, and if things get really bad they can drop their batteries and robotic arms to make the sub float back up. It’s not ideal to lose power at that depth, but at least they have some options.
I’m not trying to say the story isn’t amazing, though. The risks are real, and I’m a big fan of James Cameron and all he’s done underwater.
It’s a reminder that things can get scary, even when you think you’ve tried everything.
That’s what I love about factrepublic. You can jump into a thread and find someone who’s been down the same rabbit hole. It’s really cool and interesting.
Out of curiosity, how did you get into this kind of thing? Military? School? Just bored?
My dad was all about deep sea expeditions back in the late 90s and early 00s. I took after him for a while, but that was years ago. Now I’m an author, and a bunch of other stuff.
You’d have really dug factrepublic about ten years ago. It was all about that kind of stuff, and this comment was usually the top one instead of all the same old tired jokes.
RE: Fact #7 (Empty Homes in Edinburgh) – I was in the Bahamas a while back, and man, I saw these crazy places: beautiful houses totally overgrown, with fancy cars just sitting there in their gated driveways. Everything untouched for years. I always thought this was how it was down there.
RE: Fact #17 (Tukdam: Monks’ Death Phenomenon) – This research is just another one of those weird ideas, like trying to weigh the soul back in the early 1900s. That whole pseudoscience thing gave us the “21 grams” idea.
RE: Fact #37 (North Korea Downs U.S. Plane) – Let’s be real, if the US had fired back by taking out North Korean planes or bombing some airbases, they knew North Korea could probably wipe out Seoul in a few hours – with American troops just being a last stand. With so many US troops already in Vietnam, and more fighting in Asia likely being super unpopular back home, the only real option the US had to stop a full-on invasion of South Korea would be a nuke – a really risky move.
People forget that after the Korean War, North Korea was actually the more developed and wealthier of the two. The South’s comeback turned into crazy economic growth in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, but things were a lot closer in the 60s and 70s.
South Korea was in rough shape before their economy took off. People were even leaving to go North because the Soviet Union was throwing a ton of money at them. But when the USSR fell apart in the 90s, that money dried up and North Korea got hit with a huge famine. Their economy has been a mess ever since.
He’s buddies with Putin now, so Russian money’s flowing again!
It’s wild how much the Soviets kept some of these countries afloat. I was in Cuba ten years ago and checked out their national museum. They had a timeline of Cuban history showing all the major moments, talking about big events and changes in the country. It just stops at 1990 because after that Cuba went into a recession that it basically never recovered from.
My grandpa was a Merchant Marine officer and has seen the world. He talked about Korea in the late 50s, and it was just as bad as Nagasaki and Hiroshima. He said there was tons of poverty and hunger, and people were living in whatever they could build for shelter, even when it was freezing.
The 50s in Korea were really messed up. Curtis LeMay said 20% of the population was wiped out, and the bombers had to stop because there were no tall buildings left to bomb.
RE: Fact #7 (Empty Homes in Edinburgh) – Who’s footing the bill for those 10 years?
RE: Fact #41 (WWI Anti-German Language) – It goes way deeper than that, like before World War I, a lot of people in the US actually spoke German!
It’s crazy to think how much hate towards Germany and damage World War One caused for a lot of Americans. They even locked up German Americans in camps! There were tons of German newspapers and millions of people who only spoke German. Lots of places even had schools that only taught in German.
And that’s not even counting all the other languages people spoke in America like Yiddish, Russian, Hutterite, and Polish.
World War One basically turned all that anti-German stuff into a big mess and shut down most of the German American communities and their support systems.
It’s kinda wild, the USA is a really unique experiment to have something like this happening.
RE: Fact #50 (Margaret Cho’s Crash Diet) – I think it’s hilarious that she got told to lose weight to play herself.
Reminds me of a story Lewis Black told about auditioning for a sitcom based on his life. He didn’t get the part, and it turns out there was someone who could play him better!
Imagine him saying that.
RE: Fact #13 (Jack Kelly’s Olympic Revenge) – Kelly Drive in Philly is where they have a big rowing race every year, and it’s also where Boathouse Row is.
RE: Fact #1 (Employee Skips Work for Years) – A while back, I was working at a company in a tough industry. The sales manager, who had been there the longest, was looking to cut costs. He went through his team’s list and found a name he didn’t recognize—someone who had been on the payroll for over eight years. He couldn’t find anyone who knew the guy, so he let him go first. A month later, the local paper did a story about the layoffs, and guess what? They interviewed that guy!
He didn’t even know his own employee’s name after five years? That’s insane! Talk about a terrible manager.
Yeah, I get it. So, I worked at this big company, you know, in that location nobody really wanted to be at. There were a few locals on the team, but mostly it was college grads just starting out. They’d either move to a different office or get a job somewhere else once they had some experience.
No regrets, though. It got me the resume I needed to do what I wanted to do. But man, it was a mess the whole time.
Turns out, he was just a buddy of the boss who got to keep his job. This kind of thing happens more than you’d think.
Seriously, I’d be bummed out.
It’s tough to get back into the workforce after letting your skills get rusty for eight years.
The glitch is fixed.
RE: Fact #19 (Horse Rider Avoids DUI) – Apparently, Amish guys get so drunk they can’t even tell their own horse from another one. You can switch them out and the horses will just go home!
Finally, a life hack that’s actually useful!
RE: Fact #15 (Alcohol Once Legal in Saudi) – Seriously, he shot him because the diplomat thought the prince was too wasted and wouldn’t give him another drink.
Saudi royals were pretty cheap, though.
Most chill Saudi prince
RE: Fact #21 (Ozempic Use in U.S.) – It’s pretty wild, but these new weight-loss drugs like Ozempic might actually be helping people with alcohol problems. Two big studies, one from the NIH and another from the Lancet, found that the main ingredient in Ozempic, Semaglutide, helped rats and even overweight people with alcohol addiction cut back and stay sober. They’re not totally sure how it works, but they think it might lower cravings and change how the brain reacts to alcohol.
It’s been two months and I’m totally over my usual snacks. I guess I was addicted to food because most of it just seems gross now, haha. I thought it was because I’m less hungry, but now it feels like my taste buds are changing. I even stopped drinking so much coffee because it just… doesn’t taste that good anymore.
First the dialysis centers and diet companies weren’t happy, and now the alcohol companies are going to be ticked off.
Maybe insurance companies will start covering that stuff.
I remember an economist saying that if a lot of people use GLP-1, it’s going to have a big effect on food and booze down the line.
Man, it’s rough trying to drink beer these days on GLP-1. Yesterday, I tried to finish a whole 16-ounce craft beer, but ended up dumping the last bit. Used to be I could pound down four of those easy, and then I’d still want more.
Cutting out those four big craft beers is gonna help you drop some pounds.
RE: Fact #49 (Turtles Feel Shell Pain) – I was watching a video where a caiman, gator, or croc tried to eat a turtle. The turtle just kept walking like nothing happened and the predator went away hungry! I’m curious, how tough is a turtle’s shell?
Did it just walk away like, “ouch”? Turtles are pretty consistent with their pace, though. They don’t have a lot of options when it comes to walking.
RE: Fact #21 (Ozempic Use in U.S.) – This drug is seriously amazing, unless it turns us all into zombies in 10 years! I’ve been taking it for a while because of my heart attack and diabetes, and it’s completely changed my relationship with food. I didn’t realize how much I was addicted to food before. It’s the craziest drug I’ve ever tried, and I can’t recommend it enough.
Don’t worry too much, Novo has been working on GLP-1 drugs since the 70s, and semaglutide was in phase 2 trials 16 years ago. They’ve been at it for a long time and are a really well-respected company in Denmark. It’s a game-changer, a drug that finally kills those cravings.
It’s seriously a game-changer. No more cravings, no more intense urges to eat. You can still eat junk, but at least you’re not overeating. I told my friends this could be a big deal for obesity when it first came out a couple years ago. Now if it was just affordable, it could really make a difference for everyone’s health.
That would make us all super fit zombies, though… which is a bit scary, honestly.
Damn, I’d rather fight Walking Dead zombies than I Am Legend ones. I’m definitely going for the easier option.
RE: Fact #42 (Palace Fire and Eunuch Slaughter) – He wasn’t just some random official, he was the big boss of the new Imperial Guard and the empress’s brother. The eunuchs tricked him into the palace with a fake letter from his sister. When he got there, they chopped him up.
Then, those idiots thought they could scare He Jin’s guys by tossing his head over the palace wall.
This one event kicked off the War of the Three Kingdoms, which lasted almost a hundred years. China’s population plummeted from 56.5 million to 16 million! It took another 400 years for the country to recover.
“Beloved Commander” is a bit much, you know? Even Yuan Shao, who was close to He Jin, was probably just trying to get ahead.
If someone killed me, I’d hope my friends would really go after them.
RE: Fact #16 (U.S. College Enrollment Decline) – My college tuition went up 30% last semester, and it seems like they’re raising it every year. With good jobs getting harder to find, maybe college isn’t the best option for everyone.
My wife works in college, and she’s been saying that we’re at a point where there just won’t be as many young people going to college as before. She thinks a lot of small private colleges are going to close down in the next few years.
RE: Fact #23 (Churchill’s Favorite Champagne) – I watched a Ken Burns documentary about WWII, and there was this interview with a guy who used to work in FDR’s White House. He could still remember what Churchill drank all day long when he was staying there for a while. Apparently, it always started with champagne.
Churchill’s doctor basically gave him a note saying, “This guy can drink whatever he wants – medical reasons, you know?”
The note said he was a heavy drinker and had a problem with alcohol.
It’s pretty amazing Churchill made it to 90, given how much he drank, smoked, and ate.
Apparently, he mostly just chewed on cigars, rarely smoking a whole one. Especially during those tough years, 1940-41.
The Imperium sacrificed millions of Indians to live longer.
RE: Fact #23 (Churchill’s Favorite Champagne) – So, Churchill probably didn’t actually drink all that wine. He was known for having friends and guests over for meals and serving them wine. The idea that he drank it all came from the number of bottles he ordered.
If he drank a bottle a day, and nothing else, he’d have enough for almost 115 years. But he also liked brandy, and he probably couldn’t have drunk heavily for more than 72 years. So he’d need to be chugging two bottles a day, from 18 until he died.
It gets even trickier because they made bottles in different sizes. He drank a bottle with lunch almost every day during the war, but those bottles were pretty small. I think he drank way more gin than champagne, though.
Yeah, but that whole Churchill quote, you know, the one about being drunk and the woman being ugly? Total fake. He was definitely gonna be hungover the next morning.
Hangover? You only get one when you stop drinking!
Here’s a fun trick: Have your guests watch you drink all the booze. They won’t be too happy, but you’ll get good and drunk, and that’s the real goal, right?
Sir Winston, you’ve had a bit too much!
So, you lose your friends, which is actually a good thing – saves you money because those relationships can be pricey. More cash for drinks, you know what I mean? Great life hack!
RE: Fact #14 (Dr Pepper’s Unique Classification) – It was actually a big reason why it took off. Back in the day, Coke and Pepsi made deals with bottlers that said they wouldn’t make or sell drinks from any other cola companies. So, if you were with Coke, you couldn’t sell Pepsi, and the same goes for Pepsi. Dr. Pepper gets left out because everyone was scared of losing their deals. They took it to court and because they didn’t use cola nuts, they weren’t a cola and the contracts wouldn’t be broken. That meant they could work with all the bottlers instead of being shut out.
Dr Pepper is actually older than Coke, you know?
Turns out kola nuts are a real thing!
It depends on where you are, Coke or Pepsi usually handles the distribution.
I bet it’s the 7Up folks who are putting Dr Pepper on the shelves around here.
RE: Fact #1 (Employee Skips Work for Years) – The meat manager at my grocery store was a real piece of work. Seriously lazy, always seemed like he was on something, and totally incompetent. He took months off and our numbers went way up while he was gone. But get this, when he came back, the district manager gave him an award for having the best meat department!
It’s weird, but it’s true – productivity seems to jump when someone leaves. I noticed it at my last job, too. Do these people just not see how their absence affects things? Or maybe they don’t even care.
It’s probably just a lack of motivation. You can go above and beyond, but you’ll just get more work for your trouble. When I was at the grocery store, people would slow down because the manager would get on their case for not seeming busy even when they were finished with everything.
He’d just doze off on his feet.
He was out of work for almost a year.
I wonder if something’s seriously wrong with him.
It’s a good thing that happened.
RE: Fact #30 (Teen Develops Severe Hyperacusis) – Cindy’s whole thing started back in November 2016. She was at her friend’s place, talking on her phone at the kitchen table, and her friend’s stepdad told her to hang up twice. When she finally did, he blew an air horn right in her ear, the kind that can get super loud.
If someone did that to my kid, I’d be in a world of trouble.
I hope Cindy and her family get a big piece of this guy’s money for the rest of their lives.
RE: Fact #30 (Teen Develops Severe Hyperacusis) – That’s a real bummer, especially when you hear how it happened. Wouldn’t medically induced deafness be a better option in this case?
Tinnitus is weird. Sometimes I think, “Man, I’d rather not hear anything at all than this ringing.” The thing is, the ringing isn’t actually coming from my ears, it’s my brain trying to make sense of the damage. It’s like a broken record stuck on repeat. So if I went deaf, the ringing would probably just be louder.
RE: Fact #13 (Jack Kelly’s Olympic Revenge) – Just before he was about to leave for England to race at Henley, Jack Kelly found out he was banned. The Henley Royal Regatta people thought he wasn’t a gentleman because he used to work with his hands, and they said only gentlemen could race there.
He was supposed to race the Henley champion in the final of the 1920 Olympic single sculls. They went head-to-head, and Jack won the race and the gold medal. After the race, he sent the King of England his cap and a note that said “greetings from a bricklayer.”
It’s crazy, but Kelly and his cousin Paul won the Double Sculls race just half an hour after that! That makes Jack Kelly the only person to ever win two Olympic gold medals in less than half an hour.
RE: Fact #9 (Catatonic Woman Diagnosed Lupus) – It’s a bummer, but autoimmune diseases often take forever to get diagnosed. People usually wait about four and a half years.
It took me 12.5 hours because I was young and thought I was healthy when the symptoms started.
So, it’ll probably take a while for your extended family to get on board with your diagnosis, right?
My buddy got really sick and nobody could figure out what was wrong. He went from being a sporty guy to barely being able to move, and it took years to find out what was going on. Turns out it was Lyme Disease, which can really mess with your immune system. He had to see a bunch of doctors and try all sorts of stuff before someone figured it out, and by then he was flat broke.
RE: Fact #17 (Tukdam: Monks’ Death Phenomenon) – Tibetan Buddhists believe meditators are chilling in a super-refined state of mind with some seriously fine energy flowing through their bodies. They’re basically still dying, but according to science and the law, they’re officially dead.
RE: Fact #18 (Steve Jobs vs. Android) – He was really ticked off about the stealing, because that was kind of his specialty.
The worst part? The hypocrisy, man.
I had no idea he was sick.
I found the raping to be the most awful part.
The worst thing is, they even stole the act of stealing.
Here’s the thing, it’s super ironic. Android was all about pushing this App Store thing early on, and that’s what made Apple decide to build their own. This was even before anyone had an Android phone! Then the first Android phone came out, and guess what? The thing that was supposed to make Android special was the App Store. Apple wanted to make their own apps and have them work like Progressive Web Apps, so people could install them without needing a separate App Store. Now that Apple has the App Store, they’re really giving PWA developers a hard time. It’s annoying because we don’t need apps for everything. A lot of the simpler ones could just be websites that use your phone’s web browser instead of having their own fancy interface.
That’s messed up, man. We’re stealing steel.
RE: Fact #38 (Heavy Water Cancels Vertigo) – How do you get your hands on heavy water?
You can just grab some, it was a couple grand a liter the last time I checked.
At your local nuclear reactor, duh.
If that doesn’t work, you can also try a local chemical supply company like Sigma Aldrich.
CodySlab on YouTube had a whole series about making heavy water, but they got taken down. He’s got another video though where he makes it better, and that one’s still up.
You can find some other channels on YouTube that reuploaded the original series if you want to see it.
Why are they so secretive about making heavy water?
RE: Fact #12 (Domino’s Fails in Italy) – That’s like going to China and only eating at a Chinese restaurant.
My friend’s from mainland China and she loves pandas ’cause they’re not your typical Chinese food.
Panda Express isn’t really a bad version of Chinese food, it’s just American Chinese food. That’s a whole different thing with its own history and dishes. Domino’s though? That’s definitely a cheap knockoff of real pizza. Stupid corporate move.
Domino’s is basically a knock-off, but not of real Italian pizza. They’re more like a knock-off New York pizza. If their stuff was better, maybe they could open up in Italy and sell it as American style pizza. The thing is, their pizza just isn’t that good.
My wife is from China and she’s totally into Panda Express.
I’m obsessed with Panda Express. It’s not like “I’m in the mood for Chinese food, let’s go to Panda.” It’s more like “I’m craving Panda, gotta get Panda.”
Back when I was a server, one of the cooks was Chinese. Sometimes, the cooks would whip up stuff that wasn’t on the menu for us to eat. This guy would make some crazy chicken dish. I have no idea what it was, but it was some serious Chinese food, not your typical American takeout stuff. Everyone was going nuts for it whenever he made it.
Weird thing was, he never ate any of it. He’d just head over to the Chinese place across the street and get pepper steak and spring rolls. I thought it was kind of odd that he’d make all this delicious, real Chinese food for everyone but himself. So, I asked him why and he basically said “You guys need to know what real Chinese food is. I don’t.” Can’t really argue with that.
Korean fried chicken is super popular in America, so bringing some of that vibe to Chinese food in the US might work really well.
RE: Fact #42 (Palace Fire and Eunuch Slaughter) – text
RE: Fact #19 (Horse Rider Avoids DUI) – My great grandpa had a dry goods store back in the 1890s. He’d deliver stuff to people with a horse and wagon. He went blind later on, probably from cataracts. But his horse knew the delivery route, so he could still do it. He only had to retire after his horse died.
RE: Fact #29 (LA Parking Enforcement Costs) – So, do parking enforcement folks actually do their job? You know, making sure people park where they’re supposed to?
People on my street are seriously terrible parkers. They park in crosswalks, double and triple park in no-parking zones. Before they changed the parking spaces to those diagonal ones, people would even park in the median! It’s like they thought it was a whole extra row of spots. And guess what? They never get tickets, even when we call parking enforcement. If they just sent someone out for an hour to write tickets, they could easily make over two grand a night.
Yeah, they’re not supposed to be big money makers, just like the post office.
Look, I think tickets shouldn’t be a money-maker for anyone. All that dough should go straight to the feds, or maybe the state, not to the local towns.
The thing is, when local governments get a piece of the pie, they start playing games with the laws and speed limits just to make more cash. That can make things way more dangerous for drivers.
Traffic cops and the folks who put up signs shouldn’t be thinking about how much they can make off tickets. To stop that, we need to make sure they don’t get a single dime from traffic fines.
I feel the same way when people complain about the postal service not being profitable. It’s like, that was never the goal, right?
Public transportation fares don’t even cover a tenth of what it costs to keep the trains running. But, having a good public transit system really boosts the economy. That’s why some transit agencies are thinking about free or cheaper fares, especially for people who are struggling financially and veterans.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had that “services don’t need to be profitable” argument. Services are things you pay for to get something done, right?
RE: Fact #12 (Domino’s Fails in Italy) – That is quite a failure.