1 Tragic Creation of Hildegart
Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira, a self-taught Spanish woman with no formal education, sought to create an ideal human being through her daughter, Hildegart, who was born in 1914. By age 2, Hildegart was reading, and by 8, she spoke four languages. She entered law school at 13 and became a professor at 18. However, when Hildegart attempted to run away at 19, her mother tragically killed her.
2. Ash Ketchum caught only 57 unique Pokémon throughout the cartoon series, which is roughly 7% of all the Pokémon available to him.
3. Navinder Sarao, an autistic man living in his parents’ London home, partially caused the 2010 Flash Crash, during which the US stock market temporarily lost $1 trillion in value. Over five years, Sarao profited $40 million by using custom algorithms to trick high-frequency traders.
4. Alanis Morissette was dropped by her record label after disappointing sales of her first two albums. However, her third album, Jagged Little Pill, became the 13th highest-selling album of all time worldwide.
5. At least nine of President Kennedy’s Secret Service agents were recovering from an all-night bender that ended at 5:00 AM on the day of his assassination.
6 Globetrotters’ Unexpected Loss
During a 1990 match against the Washington Generals, the Harlem Globetrotters lost track of the game and found themselves down by 12 points with just 2 minutes left. Forced to play conventional basketball, they rallied but couldn’t recover. The final buzzer left the crowd dumbfounded and disappointed, with some children in the stands even crying after the loss.
7. Canadian serial killer nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer confessed to her pastor that she had murdered four people between 2011 and 2013, and he kept his promise not to turn her in. She also told a lawyer, a priest, and a sponsor from Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous, none of whom came forward. Elizabeth went on to murder two more people before her arrest in 2016.
8. Because M. Night Shyamalan funded the movie ‘Split’ himself, Universal executives were unaware that it was a sequel to his film ‘Unbreakable’ until they first screened it. The executives were “completely flummoxed” since Unbreakable is a Disney movie. However, Shyamalan assured them it was fine because he had already obtained permission.
9. Kurt Lee, the first Chinese-American officer in the US Marine Corps, yelled orders in Mandarin Chinese during the Battle of Inchon in the Korean War to confuse the opposing Chinese troops.
10. Gibraltar applied for city status in 2022, lost the bid, but later became a city anyway after researchers discovered that Queen Victoria had granted it city status 180 years earlier, a fact that had been forgotten.
11 McDonald’s Million-Dollar Tragedy
The 1988 McDonald’s Million Dollar winner was Scotty Landret, a 13-year-old boy whose mother went on to claim the prize. She then squandered a significant portion, and her boyfriend stole what was left. He lost his mother 10 years later, no longer speaks to his sister, and was trimming trees for a living (as of 2018).
12. In 1998, a court sentenced John Ruffo, a convicted fraudster who orchestrated a $350 million bank scam, to 17 years in prison. The government set his bail at $10 million, and his family pledged their homes as collateral to cover it. Ruffo then disappeared, leading the government to seize the homes of his wife, mother, mother-in-law, and other relatives.
13. Borat’s first movie was banned in Kazakhstan, but when the second one was released, the country launched a tourism campaign around the catchphrase “Very Nice!“
14. During Hurricane Camille in 1969, rainfall in Virginia was so intense that birds drowned in trees, and people had to cup their hands around their faces to breathe. The weather service reported that it was likely the maximum rainfall that meteorologists calculate as theoretically possible.
15. In 1998, Circuit City created and launched a proprietary disposable DVD called DIVX, which was viewable for only 48 hours after the initial viewing unless an additional fee was paid. The product’s failure in just one year cost the company so much money that it is believed to have contributed to their eventual bankruptcy.
16 Million-Dollar ‘5th Grader’ Winners
Only two individuals have won $1 million on the Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? game. The first was a superintendent of Georgia public schools, and the other one was a Nobel Prize winner in physics.
17. The “microwave-safe” label on plastic containers only means they won’t melt or warp. It doesn’t guarantee that chemicals won’t leach into your food when heated.
18. Howard Hughes, a billionaire entrepreneur, once refused to leave a hotel room in Las Vegas. Instead, he decided to purchase the entire hotel. Hughes then expanded his holdings in the city, becoming the largest employer in Nevada. People credit him with significantly contributing to the modern transformation of Las Vegas.
19. In 1840, Abraham Lincoln and four other Illinois legislators jumped out of a window to prevent a quorum on a vote that would have eliminated the Illinois State Bank. It was reported that this wasn’t the first time Lincoln had used this tactic to block a vote.
20. In ancient Sparta, brides would have their hair cut short and be dressed in men’s clothing on their wedding night to appear less threatening to their grooms.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Germany’s Paris Gun Legacy
During World War I, Germany built the Paris Gun, one of the longest and largest artillery guns ever made. The gun’s massive size led to significant wear and tear with each shot, necessitating the firing of shells in increasing diameters and in the correct order.
22. French pirate Olivier Levasseur allegedly tossed a necklace containing a 17-line cryptogram into a crowd moments before his execution, exclaiming, “Find my treasure, the one who may understand it!” Although the necklace has been lost, treasure hunters have since tried to decode the cryptogram, hoping it will lead to his hidden treasure.
23. Several elite Ivy League colleges in the United States, including those attended by many famous people, took nude photos of every incoming freshman from the 1940s to the 1970s. They conducted this practice to assess the prevalence and severity of rickets, scoliosis, and lordosis in the population.
24. Miyairi Norihiro, a contemporary Japanese swordsmith, achieved the distinction of being the youngest individual to earn the title of mukansa, a title exclusive to master swordsmiths. He also won the Masamune prize in 2010, awarded for the most outstanding sword, though none of his blades are recognized as ōwazamono, a category for exceptionally sharp swords, as his blades have never been tested on a cadaver or living person.
25. In U.S. politics, Republicans have consistently been associated with the color red and Democrats with blue only since the 2000 election, a choice made by The New York Times because “red begins with ‘r’, and Republican begins with ‘r’.“
RE: Fact #47 (Coolio’s Age in Gangsta’s Paradise) – Alice Cooper was 22 when he recorded “I’m 18”.
He’ll be saying he’s 80 before you know it.
RE: Fact #37 (Voluntary Ear Muscle Rumbling) – I thought everyone knew how to do that.
RE: Fact #12 (John Ruffo’s Disappearance) – A $10 million bond and only a $25,000 reward? No wonder nobody’s trying to find him.
This guy ripped off banks for $350 million. I don’t know all the details, but if he stashed any of that cash, he’d probably pay you more than the reward just to keep you quiet if you found him.
Apparently, the FBI thinks he still has a whopping 200 million left.
RE: Fact #24 (Norihiro’s Swordsmith Achievements) – This guy’s a real master swordsmith, but none of his blades have ever been used in a fight. I guess that’s a good thing, right?
The other word in the title is cadaver, which is definitely not a living person.
It’s crazy how many times someone getting cut in half turns out to be a dead body instead of a real person.
As far as we’re aware…
Weird how many people get split in half in that part of Japan at night, huh?
He just goes straight past that whole guilt trip about making weapons.
He should have died for his art, sacrificing himself to create a cursed weapon.
He’s probably beat, wishing his weapons had actually been something special. He’s probably thinking, “If only these things had seen some real action…”
RE: Fact #11 (McDonald’s Million-Dollar Tragedy) – Just so you know, a million bucks back in 1988 is the same as about two and a half million today.
Imagine if they had put that money in the S&P 500 back in 1988! It would be worth a whopping $46.7 million today.
But that million bucks wouldn’t do them any good if they got it now, right?
That’s not how it went down. She was supposed to get an annuity, but she went for the lump sum instead, which was probably around $600,000. That’s usually how it works with the lottery too.
RE: Fact #19 (Lincoln’s Quorum-Blocking Tactic) – It’s kinda funny to imagine these big-shot historical figures acting like college kids, you know?
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were real rivals back then, like two kids fighting for the same toy.
They changed the rules because they didn’t want to be president and vice president at the same time.
RE: Fact #12 (John Ruffo’s Disappearance) – He’s still out there somewhere, I wonder what he’s up to.
RE: Fact #44 (Meritless Government Job Appointments) – Guiteau didn’t even know Garfield, just wrote him a random letter to a magazine that hardly anyone read, then wanted a job. Crazy!
He was totally off his rocker, thought the president was his buddy. He drove everyone crazy asking about the job, they told him to never bring it up again. Dude was seriously strange.
RE: Fact #12 (John Ruffo’s Disappearance) – How many houses did they need to get to 10 million?
It’s probably around 10%, so a million.
A million houses? That’s a lot!
So, on House Hunters today…
He’s a used golf ball reseller, and she makes origami cranes.
They’ve got a budget of $10 million!
They had this assistant manager from a grocery store chain, like 30 years old, and a stay-at-home mom with three little kids, looking at beach houses in the Virgin Islands. Maybe if they’re about to retire, I could see it, but come on, with young families? I don’t care if it’s a shack that’s been through a dozen hurricanes and is somehow under a hundred grand. Just the cost of getting there wouldn’t work for five people.
I was like, “Man, I’d love to live in a place like that,” and they were all, “Eh, I’m not really digging the countertops.”
RE: Fact #23 (Ivy League Freshmen Nude Photos) – The Smithsonian Institution locked up a bunch of naked photos of college students. These weren’t just any students, though, some became really famous later on! The photos were originally meant to study posture, but then a researcher used them to see if body shape and smarts were connected.
That’s totally something Nicolas Cage would do!
RE: Fact #38 (Asthma Among Olympians) – Those vasodilator drugs are a real bummer for the Olympians, huh?
RE: Fact #35 (Russ Columbo’s Death Concealment) – My brother’s got stage four cancer, and we’re keeping it from Grandma. She’s 94 and starting to forget things, so we’re worried she’ll freak out if she knew. The whole family’s in on the secret.
RE: Fact #48 (Longest Cutscene in Gaming) – It’s a movie.
RE: Fact #15 (Circuit City’s DIVX Failure) – I remember this so clearly. I walked into Circuit City and they were pushing this thing so hard. I laughed at them trying to sell me a stupid format that would totally fail. Can you believe they thought it would work? I left with a Sony MiniDisc player and some blank discs. I showed them!
So, wasn’t the plan to just, you know, keep the movie? Like, it’s a rental but you don’t give it back, just toss it. But now I’m going back to the store… to rent another one?
RE: Fact #6 (Globetrotters’ Unexpected Loss) – Imagine being on the other side and you just had the biggest blunder of your career by winning a game.
Why are they such a flop? Are they just there for show?
The Trotters are pretty down to earth. They’ll play even small shows, my high school with only 500 people had them perform once.
They’re basically just a show, you know? They break the rules all the time and everything’s just for laughs. It’s all about watching them do their tricks.
RE: Fact #14 (Hurricane Camille’s Deadly Rain) – I was just a little kid when that huge storm hit the Mississippi coast. I grew up hearing stories and seeing pictures of all the damage. My dad told me a wind monitor at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi blew off during a gust that reached 220 mph.
That’s messed up. Talk about a party that got cut short!
I went to Pass Christian to help clean up a few weeks after Katrina. All I saw were concrete slabs everywhere. And inland, a couple of miles in, you could see houses stuck in the trees.
An anemometer is what you’re looking for.
RE: Fact #40 (Fatal Commotio Cordis Condition) – My teammate died playing hockey, he went to block a shot and got hit right in the chest by the puck. Doctors said it hit his heart at the wrong time and basically stopped it. His mom was a nurse and tried to help, but it was too late. Apparently, the only way he could have survived was if they shocked him right away. I still think about him sometimes, even though it’s been 25 years.
RE: Fact #33 (Hometown Deli’s Market Value) – Hometown’s expenses went way up last year, hitting over $600,000 compared to about $154,000 in 2019. They also made a pretty good chunk of change, about $2.2 million, from selling stock.
That’s how Scientology steals money, haha!
I used to work for them. It’s so obvious how they do it, lol.
Tell me more about that Scientology thing! I need some details, like a whole story.
Seriously, how is the stock market even allowed to exist? It’s like the rich folks just get to gamble with everyone else’s money. I mean, the top 10% own 93% of the stock market wealth, it’s not like it’s helping everyday people out.
It’s just about spreading the risk of running a business among as many people as possible.
RE: Fact #40 (Fatal Commotio Cordis Condition) – This is wild, but a wrestler got hit with a bunch of elbow drops during a match on TV and it messed up his heart rhythm. He was dead for five minutes before they got him back with a defibrillator.
Wrestling’s all staged, but those guys really do get hit hard.
RE: Fact #20 (Spartan Bridal Haircut Tradition) – They wore men’s clothes so their husbands wouldn’t be scared on their wedding night.
RE: Fact #48 (Longest Cutscene in Gaming) – I got home from work, super tired, ready to play some Yakuza, and it was over an hour of just pressing X to get through dialogue. I think I walked maybe 10 feet to a grave, that’s it. Had to go to bed, and guess what? The game didn’t save any of it!
RE: Fact #25 (Red and Blue Political Colors) – I haven’t seen anyone use the elephant and donkey thing in a while, it used to be way more common.
I see the elephant and donkey everywhere, especially on news graphics. Turns out the Democrats have a whole section of their online store dedicated to the donkey.
I see the elephant on political signs all the time, but hardly ever the donkey.
I only see it in dumb political cartoons.
RE: Fact #35 (Russ Columbo’s Death Concealment) – That’s heartbreaking. She never saw her son again, I’d be crushed if I couldn’t find time to visit my kid even for birthdays or Christmas.
Your mom would be more upset that you were too busy with your music and traveling to visit her than if you actually died, right?
It’s scary to think that the shock of losing her son could be enough to kill his mom, especially with her heart condition. Some people thought it was better to live in the dark for a while than to deal with the pain of knowing right away.
RE: Fact #41 (European Bedding Ceremony Tradition) – The also hung the bloody sheets out the next morning to show everyone the bride was a virgin.
Wait, seriously? 16th century? Before they even had those fancy machines for making fabric?
Someone spent a hundred hours just making that sheet, and you’re supposed to use it for… you know?
They knew how to get rid of blood stains.
RE: Fact #42 (Election Day’s Tuesday Origin) – Wouldn’t it be easier to have the election on the weekend when most people are off work?
Back in the day, almost everyone was a farmer. They worked all the time, with Saturday being the only day off for farmers’ markets. And the whole five-day workweek thing didn’t happen until the 1900s.
Maybe we should just make it a holiday and force everyone to vote. Come on, America, we need to hear what you think!
RE: Fact #21 (Germany’s Paris Gun Legacy) – Yeah, they kept using it in World War II. The Schwerer Gustav is pretty crazy, firing 7-ton shells at the enemy. It only had a 47-kilometer range though.
RE: Fact #3 (Navinder Sarao and Flash Crash) – Sarao’s super smart, he’s got Asperger’s, and he saw making money in the market like winning a video game.
He was basically a “flash-crash trader” who used special software to trade on the Chicago Mercantile Index.
Here’s the thing, these “high frequency traders” – mostly just computers running programs – would try to make trades super fast, before anyone else could. They wanted to be the first to make money from changes in the market.
Sarao figured out that these high frequency traders all used similar software. It was like a bunch of sheep all moving together, making the market really jumpy.
So, he created software that would place tons of orders, then cancel or change them right away. He was basically faking demand, making other traders buy or sell things.
This is called “spoofing” and it let him make real buy or sell orders and make a profit when the prices went up or down.
He was like a sneaky dog, pretending to go one way and then turning around to get the prize before the other traders even knew what was happening.
He made about $40 million over five years.
In the end, he said he lost all his money to fraud, so he didn’t go to jail.
RE: Fact #14 (Hurricane Camille’s Deadly Rain) – That reminds me of the book ‘The Man Who Rode Thunder.’ That man nearly drowned falling through a thundercloud.
“That injury isn’t because of your time in the service.”
It’s a bummer, not many people are signing up for the military these days. They get treated like crap while they’re in, and it’s not much better once they get out. What’s a person supposed to do?
And then they were back in action, not long after that.
Oorah
RE: Fact #27 (Longest Javelin Throw Technique) – Did anyone else even see that “eternal record of 104.80m”?
They basically freeze the records when they change the javelins. Since those old javelins are never going to be used again, nobody can set a new record with them.
They tweak the rules or javelin design if they start flying so far they could mess with other events happening on the field.
RE: Fact #42 (Election Day’s Tuesday Origin) – It’s kind of crazy how decisions from way back then still affect us today.
Back in the 1800s, most people were farmers. And forget about weekends, those were a thing of the industrial revolution.
RE: Fact #41 (European Bedding Ceremony Tradition) – It’s tough when you get nervous about performing, right?
My friend had a wedding after-party in a hotel suite. A while after the party started, she and the groom showed up. She told everyone right away that he wasn’t up for anything romantic because he’d had too much to drink.
RE: Fact #36 (Coolidge Effect in Males) – A male guinea pig once escaped and got 100 female guinea pigs pregnant.
That’s a total of 400, spread out over a few weeks.
RE: Fact #8 (Shyamalan’s ‘Split’ Sequel Surprise) – He loves a good twist, whether it’s in a movie or real life. As long as it gets his heart racing, he’s happy.
RE: Fact #28 (Samurai Descendants in Spain) – I never thought I’d see my hometown on factrepublic, but here we are! We get tons of Japanese tourists, and even though we don’t speak a word of Japanese, they always have a good time here.
What’s the name of the town?
RE: Fact #1 (Tragic Creation of Hildegart) – William James Sidis is a similar story, except he just ditched everything and became a janitor. You can totally push a kid to be a super smart academic, but as soon as they get to choose, they usually want to do their own thing and live their life. Most of them, from what I’ve read, end up cracking under the pressure.
If the real world is any indication, a lot of PhD students are seriously thinking about ditching everything and becoming bakers.
RE: Fact #37 (Voluntary Ear Muscle Rumbling) – It just sounds like blowing into a microphone.
RE: Fact #23 (Ivy League Freshmen Nude Photos) – Weird that those photos never got out.
Back in the day, before the internet, it was way harder to leak stuff. These days, we kind of just assume that privacy doesn’t mean as much anymore.
RE: Fact #2 (Ash Ketchum’s Pokémon Catch Rate) – Yeah, but that’s not the whole story. Ash has actually caught, like, 98 Pokémon in the whole series! That’s a pretty big deal, 12% of the whole Pokedex.
The Pokedex counts evolutions as new catches, so his Pokedex would show 98.
“Gotta catch a respectable 12% of ’em” just doesn’t sound as catchy.
RE: Fact #25 (Red and Blue Political Colors) – It’s time to switch things up. Giving teams colors and calling states red or blue hasn’t helped things, you know? It’s just made things more divided.
If we banned red and blue, people would just pick something else to show what group they’re in. It’s the division that makes us care about those colors, not the other way around.
Remember how everyone used to put up American flags? Now it’s like, “Whoa, that person’s super right-wing!” People always find a way to show who they’re with when they think it matters.
RE: Fact #1 (Tragic Creation of Hildegart) – Aurora shot her daughter while she slept. People had different ideas about why she did it. Maybe Hildegart was in love. Or maybe she wanted to leave her mom. Aurora said she was like a sculptor who destroys a piece if it’s even a little bit flawed.
That quote is totally messed up, like something straight out of an anime.
Sculptors have used it to get rid of sculptures they didn’t want to sell.
It’s not for people.
RE: Fact #15 (Circuit City’s DIVX Failure) – I was working there back then. Getting rid of the appliance department during a building boom and basically handing money to Home Depot and Lowes wasn’t smart.
RE: Fact #19 (Lincoln’s Quorum-Blocking Tactic) – They threw themselves out the window. I don’t get why the admin passed up the chance to use the word “defenestration.”
RE: Fact #49 (Condoms at 1988 Seoul Olympics) – I read this interview with an athlete where they talked about how there’s a lot of sex at the Olympics, but not as much as people think. They said that a bunch of condoms disappear because people think it’s funny to have Olympic-branded condoms as souvenirs.
RE: Fact #34 (Axis Fathered 400,000 Children) –Possible the entry just confused or combined definitions behind the terms “axis” and “allied”
The source for this entry is a good read and makes much better sense.
RE: Fact #29 (Pliny’s Yogurt Mention) – Pliny the Elder wrote some really cool stuff, but he also wrote some stuff that’s totally funny, without him even trying! Especially about animals.
He knew himself pretty well, too.
Life is short, man, full of ups and downs. We all come and go, right? But what makes it worth it is what we do while we’re here. The cool stuff people do, the things that make them heroes or geniuses, those last a long time. But even the everyday folks, the ones who just show love and kindness, they leave their mark on the world, too.
In a college interview, they asked me how I’d change the world. I basically said, “Nah, not me, but maybe my kids will, or their kids. Or maybe a friend will!” My hope is that I’ll make such a positive impact on the people around me that it’ll help them make a difference, or inspire them to do the same for others.
RE: Fact #21 (Germany’s Paris Gun Legacy) – Germany used those cannons to rain fire on Paris, from way out there. They could even reach the edge of space!
Each shot wore away the gun, so the shells had to get bigger and bigger. You couldn’t just fire them in any order, or you’d blow up the gun. They even had to measure the gun barrel after each shot, because a little difference would mean a big change in where the shell landed. Then they’d add extra gunpowder to make sure the shell went the right distance. After 65 shots, the barrel was worn out and had to be sent back to the factory.
Those shells took forever to fly. About three minutes to reach Paris, going super high up in the air – way higher than anything else had ever been. It was so high up, the guys aiming the guns had to figure out how the Earth was spinning, to know where the shells would land. For the first time, people were getting hit by bombs from space!
That’s messed up, 75 miles away!
They had to use trains to move the guns and pour concrete for the base.
When they fired it, they had to be 400 meters away because the blast would blow out your eardrums.
World War I is fascinating.
RE: Fact #36 (Coolidge Effect in Males) – The name comes from an old joke about Calvin Coolidge when he was President. The story goes that the President and Mrs. Coolidge were visiting a government farm. Mrs. Coolidge saw a rooster mating really often and asked how often it happened. The farm worker told her it happened dozens of times a day. Mrs. Coolidge said to tell the President when he came by. When the President heard, he asked if it was the same hen each time. The worker said no, it was a different hen every time. The President said, “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”
RE: Fact #2 (Ash Ketchum’s Pokémon Catch Rate) – Give him a break, he’s just a kid.
With over 1200 episodes, he’d have to be at least 13, maybe even older, since time seems to move a lot faster between episodes.
RE: Fact #8 (Shyamalan’s ‘Split’ Sequel Surprise) – Can you imagine? You’re the studio head and the director shows you a sequel to a movie from another studio!
Man, that guy really likes to throw in a surprise ending. Gotta hand it to him for sticking with it.
It usually doesn’t work, but with Split, it actually did.
RE: Fact #35 (Russ Columbo’s Death Concealment) – So, on Sunday, September 2nd, 1934, Columbo got shot in a really weird way by his buddy, a photographer named Lansing Brown. They were at Brown’s place, and Brown had a bunch of guns. They were messing around with them, and Brown said he was playing with this old-fashioned dueling pistol. He was pulling the trigger, clicking it over and over, and he had a match in his hand. Apparently, the match got stuck between the hammer and the firing pin, and boom! It went off. Columbo fell over, and the bullet bounced off a table before hitting him in the head. Doctors tried to remove the bullet, but it didn’t work, and he died a few hours later. They called it an accident, and Brown wasn’t in trouble.
RE: Fact #13 (Kazakhstan’s Borat Tourism Campaign) – I Remember when I rented Borat on DVD. I was totally freaked out when I opened the case. It looked like a plain, blank disc, just a black marker scribble saying “BOЯAT” on it. I actually thought I got a bootleg and had to pay them to replace it! Then I realized it was all part of the joke. That’s my random memory from the mid 2000s.
Yeah, same here. My dad showed up with the DVD when I was totally into burning discs. For a minute, I thought he’d been silly enough to buy it from some random person in Manhattan. I could have totally done that myself! They were pretty smart with that one.
RE: Fact #47 (Coolio’s Age in Gangsta’s Paradise) – Turns out Elton John never went to Mars. Not his gig, apparently.
Maybe Johnny Cash didn’t actually kill anyone just to see them die.
RE: Fact #11 (McDonald’s Million-Dollar Tragedy) – It’s really sad to take that future away from a child. Awful.
RE: Fact #31 (Landmine Detonation Misconception) – Wiki also talks about mines that go off when the pressure is released, like the MS3, but I’m guessing those are pretty rare.
RE: Fact #19 (Lincoln’s Quorum-Blocking Tactic) – It’s like you can see it all happening in slow motion – Lincoln’s got his eye on the window, and everyone’s just waiting for him to make a break for it. Then, bam! Everyone takes off running, the boss is shouting “Get him! Get him now!”
RE: Fact #43 (Largest Airline Food Poisoning) – So, they traced the food poisoning back to this company in Anchorage that makes airplane food. Turns out, one of their cooks had these weird sores on his fingers, and they were full of staph. It was the same kind of staph they found in the food, so they knew he was the problem. And to make matters worse, they left the food out at room temperature for six hours before refrigerating it! And then they heated it up in the ovens on the plane without refrigerating it again. If they’d just kept it cold the whole time, none of this would have happened. I don’t know what’s worse.
Ugh, that first one was really gross and the second part almost made me puke.
RE: Fact #41 (European Bedding Ceremony Tradition) – That was pretty common with royals in other countries too, right? They wanted to make sure the heir was legit.
RE: Fact #50 (London’s ‘Wandering Whore’ Guide) – “Man of pleasure’s calendar” isn’t exactly saying “stay away.”
RE: Fact #27 (Longest Javelin Throw Technique) – Back in 1956, some athletes started messing around with this new javelin throw called “free style.” One guy, Pentti Saarikoski, tossed the spear a super long distance using this crazy technique where he held the javelin by the end. The refs were freaking out because it was so unpredictable, so they decided to ban the whole thing with some new rules.
RE: Fact #31 (Landmine Detonation Misconception) – Landmines are pretty tricky, they can work in different ways, like in movies, or with tripwires, magnets, or other stuff. The admin didn’t read the whole Wikipedia article before making this post.
Hollywood always makes hand grenades seem like they have a 10 second fuse, but that’s usually wrong. They’re more like 4 seconds. Some have longer fuses, but then there’s a chance someone could throw them back at you.
RE: Fact #32 (Whitewash’s Health Benefits) – Most islands in the Cyclades make you paint your house white every year.
RE: Fact #14 (Hurricane Camille’s Deadly Rain) – How much rain did we get?