26 Mountain Dew Mouse Dissolution Case
In 2012, a man sued Mountain Dew after claiming he found a mouse in a can. Mountain Dew claimed that fifteen months in the can would have dissolved the mouse. The case was eventually settled.
27. Earth’s magnetic field was roughly twice as strong during Roman times as it is today.
28. In Japan, some restaurants and attractions have begun charging higher prices for foreign tourists than for locals. This approach helps manage increased demand without overburdening local customers.
29. In 2021, a Louisiana woman who ran out of her usual hair spray used Gorilla Glue Spray, mistakenly believing it was hair spray. Her hair became glued to her scalp, and eventually a plastic surgeon performed a free, 4-hour surgery to remove the adhesive.
30. Anyone in the U.S. can sign up to receive a free horse through the Wild Horse and Burro Program, provided they have the resources to house and care for it.
31 Ford Model T’s Price Drop
When Ford released the Model T in 1908, it cost $825 (equivalent to about $28,000 in 2023). Despite its popularity (around 15 million were eventually sold), Ford kept dropping the price. By 1925, the basic model cost only $260, or about $4,500 today.
32. The birds we call penguins today are actually not true penguins. They were named after an extinct species due to their similar appearance, but no true penguins are alive today.
33. Nazi physician Johanna Haarer advocated a child-rearing approach that placed newborns in a separate room from their mother for the first three months of life, allowing only strictly regulated, 20-minute breastfeeding visits.
34. In the Middle Ages, some suicidal individuals feared eternal damnation from directly ending their lives. Instead, they would commit a capital crime against an innocent child, then turn themselves in and demand execution.
35. In 1957, a man sued his own search warrant and won the case in the Supreme Court. In Marcus v. Search Warrant, he argued the warrant was too vague. Since the agents had acted within the law, he had no recourse but to challenge the warrant itself.
36 Female Gladiators Banned by Severus
In 200 CE, Roman Emperor Septimius Severus banned all female gladiatorial combat. He reportedly made this decision after hearing lewd jokes aimed at women in athletic contests, fearing that such events bred disrespect toward all women.
37. During WWII, pilots frequently blacked out during sharp turns as strong G-forces caused blood to pool in their legs. British ace Douglas Bader, who had lost his legs in an accident, did not experience this problem since he used prosthetics.
38. U.S. President Benjamin Harrison became a widower in 1892 while serving in office. Four years later, he married his late wife’s niece and had a daughter with her. His adult children, horrified by their father marrying their cousin, refused to attend the wedding.
39. A zeptosecond-a trillionth of a billionth of a second-is the smallest unit of time ever measured.
40. Hotels in the U.S. now routinely stock ice, a practice that began in the 1950s when the Holiday Inn chain aimed to set itself apart by offering this amenity to guests.
41 The 1939 Pet Massacre in Britain
In 1939, during the Great British Dog and Cat Massacre, Londoners voluntarily killed over 400,000 of their pets in a single month to ease the strain on resources as they prepared for war with Nazi Germany.
42. While still a teenager, mathematician Évariste Galois solved a 350-year-old problem. Tragically, he died at 20 after suffering wounds in a duel, the reasons for which remain unclear.
43. Adolf Hitler became stateless in 1925 after renouncing his Austrian citizenship, remaining without citizenship for seven years. He eventually gained German citizenship in 1932. The delay was due to several attempts to get him a government job, which would have immediately granted him citizenship.
44. Under the Invention Secrecy Act, the U.S. government can block certain patent applications if they pose a perceived threat to national security. Inventors may be forbidden from sharing or profiting from their creations without knowing the specific reason why.
45. In China, people usually drink their water hot.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 First Successful Primate Cloning
Scientists have largely overcome scientific barriers to human cloning. In 2018, Chinese scientists successfully cloned two crab-eating macaques, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, marking the first successful cloning of primates.
47. During the filming of Dazed and Confused, 16-year-old Milla Jovovich married her on-screen boyfriend, 21-year-old Shawn Andrews. Her mother had the marriage annulled two months later.
48. Near the end of her life, Ada Lovelace underwent a religious transformation and expressed regret over her past conduct. Three months before her death, Ada Lovelace confessed something to her husband, who then abandoned her at her bedside. What she revealed to him remains unknown.
49. In 2021, a 15-year-old blind teenager named Jasen Bracy played quarterback for a California high school football team. He accomplished this by memorizing plays and receiving real-time guidance from his father, who communicated from the sidelines using a walkie-talkie.
50. When Jimi Hendrix first performed in front of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and members of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, their reactions included astonished comments like “shit,” “Jesus,” and “damn.”
RE: Fact #49 (Blind Teen Plays Quarterback) – That story about the brave kid was really cool, but it’s also a reminder that the news doesn’t always get everything right. The kid hasn’t played quarterback since that year, he’s a senior now on the Enoch High team, but he’s not listed on the roster and the only thing he’s got on his record is one tackle.
It’s messed up how they’re showing this. I mean, there are real news articles about him playing college football. It’s just not cool to present it like that, it’s unfair to him and everyone else.
Dude, getting tackled when you’re totally blind? That’s gotta be like winning the big prize, right? How did you even get hit?
RE: Fact #9 (Loudest Shout Record Stands) – Corey Taylor, the guy from Slipknot, was on the show and even he was blown away.
“Man, that teacher totally got me,” Taylor said, laughing. “She just yelled right over me!” He added, “They’re seriously good,” repeating it a bunch of times. Corey was like, “I should totally add her to the list of musicians I play with this summer!”
Alex Terrible from Slaughter to Prevail does this thing where he sings a whole song without a mic, just by screaming super loud. I wonder how it sounds live.
RE: Fact #33 (Nazi Infant Care Controversy) – Nazism was to destroy ,as far could be, all previous history in a way they could become ‘the master human race’, having removed, altered all sensible recollection of what had been before.
RE: Fact #22 (Baretop Tricksters’ Robbery Tactic) – That blurry image totally tricked me into going to that website with no pictures.
RE: Fact #5 (Early Cryonics’ Financial Downfall) – It’s actually ‘preserved’, not ‘cryogenically’ frozen.
RE: Fact #6 (Bassist’s Clever Placebo Switch) – Em 2010 eu tocava numa banda de jazz e o pianinho ficaram chato, ficava querendo que eu mudasse o som do baixo toda hora. Eu mexia nos pedais e voltava com a mesma regulagem de antes pois eu já tinha tudo mapeado e ele achava que eu tinha mudado o som do baixo.
Translation – In 2010 I was playing in a jazz band and the piano was annoying, he kept asking me to change the bass sound all the time. I would touch the pedals and go back to the same settings as before because I had already mapped everything and he thought I had changed the bass sound.
RE: Fact #7 (Top Gear’s Global Spread Secret) – I got to go to a recording of the show! It was a blast, and I even got to answer a question on TV. I also got to chat with Hammond between takes during one part.
RE: Fact #34 (Suicide Through Capital Crimes) – They’d just make up stories too, you know? Like that time Otto of Hesse-Kessel tried to shoot a barking dog and ended up shooting himself in the chest, totally missed! Or maybe he killed himself and they came up with the dog thing so they could bury him in church.
RE: Fact #13 (Redd Foxx’s Draft Evasion Trick) – A new way to do things, maybe?
I’d rather drink poison than deal with another draft.
Just kidding, WWII is over.
RE: Fact #25 (Kidnapped Schoolchildren Escape Plot) – The kidnappers took the bus to a quarry and hid it in a truck trailer. The bus driver and the kids dug their way out after being trapped for 16 hours. The driver, Ed Ray, kept everyone calm, and they worked together to escape. The kidnappers were rich kids who wanted to pay off their debts. They tried to call for ransom, but the lines were busy. They didn’t fall asleep, though.
What a dumb way to get out of debt!
The kidnappers were all caught and sent to jail for life. They were let out after a long time.
RE: Fact #45 (Hot Water Preference in China) – I was in a meeting in Beijing and the office manager filled my cup with hot water. I thought it was because I had a cough from the long flight, even though I tried to hide it. Then I saw my boss and realized everyone got some. It was a nice gesture, even if it wasn’t just for me.
RE: Fact #18 (Hara Hachi Bun Me Diet) – It’s basically like, “don’t stuff yourself, just eat until you’re not hungry anymore.” That’s been the go-to advice for not overeating forever, right?
RE: Fact #9 (Loudest Shout Record Stands) – Yeah, Motorhead’s shows were LOUD, they actually made the ceiling collapse at one concert in Cleveland. So, yeah, 121dB is pretty loud!
I saw Motorhead open for Foo Fighters back in 2011, and I swear I got half my tinnitus from that gig.
130 decibels is seriously loud, like ten times louder than 120 decibels.
So, like, a normal voice is usually measured at about a meter away, but concerts are way farther out, maybe 30 meters. A regular voice at 121 decibels a meter away would be about 90 decibels at 30 meters. But then, a concert at 130 decibels at 30 meters would be super loud, like 160 decibels, up close. It’s basically comparing two different things, you know?
Yeah, decibels are logarithmic, so a 10 dB increase is actually a tenfold increase in loudness. So 130 dB is much, much louder than 121 dB.
RE: Fact #7 (Top Gear’s Global Spread Secret) – I’m really glad it got shared around so much. Most of it was scripted, but the show was absolutely insane and incredibly entertaining. Clarkson, May, and Hammond can be a bit controversial, but they know how to make a really engaging show.
There’s so much crazy stuff that happens in what looks like a normal car show. I still go back and watch it because it’s one of the few shows that actually makes me laugh out loud. I remember one bit where they’re reviewing a car and it’s broken down into segments. As the review goes on, the segments get stranger. The final deciding point on whether or not the car was good was whether or not it would be useful for a sodium and eel salesman. It was completely absurd, in the best way possible.
I’ve been thinking about going back and watching the whole 23-year backlog. Their final show a few weeks ago hit me harder than I expected. I used to watch it with my Grandfather all the time when I was a kid, and he wasn’t around to see the final show. We have lots of great memories watching that show together over the years.
If you haven’t seen it, give it a try, even if you don’t like cars. It’s a real gem.
RE: Fact #34 (Suicide Through Capital Crimes) – The article is much clearer: “they would murder an innocent child.”
RE: Fact #33 (Nazi Infant Care Controversy) – Haarer thought separating a baby was super important for their “training”. If a baby kept crying after they’d been fed on time, cleaned up, and given a dummy, she’d say, “toughen up, mom!” and just let them cry it out.
She thought babies were like, pre-human, and didn’t really have a mind for the first few months. She thought crying was just their way of passing the time. She strongly advised moms to not pick up, rock, or try to comfort crying babies. She thought it would make them think they could get a reaction out of people and they’d end up being little tyrants.
Her work helped shape how people raised kids, and it all lined up with the goals of the Hitler Youth. Advice centers and training courses for moms based on her ideas were a way to teach Nazi ideology.
RE: Fact #46 (First Successful Primate Cloning) – We’ve got 200,000 clones ready to go, and we’re making a million more.
That’s messed up, right? Cloning tons of people just to use them as soldiers or for parts. It’s all for some crazy old guy’s twisted vision. We’d be better off without it.
RE: Fact #29 (Gorilla Glue Hair Spray Mishap) – She thought it was glue, so she figured it would be fine.
RE: Fact #16 (Negative Buoyancy in Freediving) – I sink like a rock unless I’m totally full of air, and even then I barely stay afloat.
RE: Fact #49 (Blind Teen Plays Quarterback) – That’s seriously impressive, I’m not trying to downplay it, but I bet the other team isn’t exactly thrilled about facing him.
RE: Fact #22 (Baretop Tricksters’ Robbery Tactic) – My old neighbor, a detective, warned me about a gas station near my house. Apparently, these women would pretend to be sex workers, lure guys to a parking lot, and then they’d get robbed by her and another guy.
RE: Fact #11 (Church Sanctuary Knocker Protection) – It wasn’t uncommon for escorts who felt sorry for prisoners to take them through a churchyard on the way to their punishment, so they could say goodbye to people. I think sometimes the church would send them away to live somewhere else instead of facing their punishment.
Some churches in the US are calling the cops on homeless people and talking about sending illegal immigrants back to their country.
RE: Fact #26 (Mountain Dew Mouse Dissolution Case) – It’s not a crazy idea, and it doesn’t make Mountain Dew look bad.
If you put a mouse in a can of pure orange juice for a year and a half, it wouldn’t be in as good shape as the mouse he said he found.
The point is, pH is safe to drink, but it eats away at dead stuff.
RE: Fact #33 (Nazi Infant Care Controversy) – These Nazis, man, the more I hear about them, the less I think they’re good people.
Hitler was a real jerk.
A German person can’t be all bad…
Wait, hold on…
RE: Fact #20 (British Museum’s Hidden Collection) – It’s the same for most museums, right? They only show off a small part of what they have. There’s just not enough room, and they like to change things up to keep people coming back. Plus, some stuff is too delicate to put on display, and some things aren’t that interesting to look at but are still really important for scientists and historians.
RE: Fact #13 (Redd Foxx’s Draft Evasion Trick) – Sergeant: You good to fight?
Max: I’m gay, I wear dresses, I don’t like violence, and my lung’s a little messed up.
Sergeant: Just don’t have flat feet.
RE: Fact #16 (Negative Buoyancy in Freediving) – So, free divers gotta really hustle to swim back up to the surface.
RE: Fact #20 (British Museum’s Hidden Collection) – Too bad, I’ve always been curious about that “unknown bone fragment”
RE: Fact #39 (The Tiny Zeptosecond Unit) – Light travels a tiny fraction of a nanometer in a zeptosecond.
RE: Fact #7 (Top Gear’s Global Spread Secret) – Alex Mills, who went by Viper007Bond, really helped car fans through FinalGear. He’ll be missed.
RE: Fact #50 (Hendrix’s Astonishing First Gig) – Hendrix played “Sunshine of Your Love” live, right in front of Clapton and the Beatles, the same week it was released.
RE: Fact #12 (The Double Execution Case) – Willie Francis, a young Black guy, was sentenced to death by electrocution in Louisiana back in 1945 for killing Andrew Thomas, a Cajun pharmacist who’d hired him before.
Even though he wrote down confessions twice, Francis said he wasn’t guilty. His court-appointed lawyers didn’t fight for him, didn’t call any witnesses, and didn’t even try to defend him. They didn’t even question if his confessions were real. Just two days after the trial started, Willie was found guilty by 12 white jurors and the judge.
The gun used to kill Thomas was found near the crime scene. It belonged to a sheriff’s deputy who’d said he wanted to kill Thomas. The gun and bullets disappeared right before the trial.
People said they heard the teenager screaming, “Take it off! Let me breathe!” as the electric chair was turned on.
The electric chair, nicknamed “Gruesome Gertie,” was messed up by a drunk prison guard and inmate.
It’s weird, but the lawyer defending Francis in front of the Supreme Court was really close with Thomas, the guy who was killed.
RE: Fact #4 (Teen’s Poor Diet Causes Blindness) – My half-sister was born when I was fifteen. She basically lived on junk food and microwave dinners. She developed a hunchback when she was sixteen, had no energy for anything, and now at thirty-nine, she’s got some weird immune disorder. I’m pretty sure she was really messed up by all the bad food.
RE: Fact #42 (Galois’ Life and Tragic Duel) – He got turned down by the top math school in France because they thought he hadn’t had enough training to explain his ideas. He ended up going to a less famous program and started making amazing discoveries right away.
RE: Fact #1 (Extra Fries for Value Effect) – He’s got a point. I know it, but I always feel like I got more than I should.
RE: Fact #6 (Bassist’s Clever Placebo Switch) – Leland’s played on a ton of albums, like Paul Anka, Chet Atkins, Clint Black, Jackson Browne, Jimmy Buffett, Glen Campbell, Vanessa Carlton, Kim Carnes, Cher, Joe Cocker, Leonard Cohen, Phil Collins, Alice Cooper, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Neil Diamond, Donovan, Peter Frampton, Art Garfunkel, Arlo Guthrie, Sammy Hagar, Merle Haggard, Hall & Oates, Don Henley, Faith Hill, Engelbert Humperdinck, Enrique Iglesias, Julio Iglesias, Wynonna Judd, BB King, Carole King, Kris Kristofferson, Lisa Loeb, Lyle Lovett, Barry Manilow, Ricky Martin, Reba McEntire, Bette Midler, Giorgio Moroder, Willie Nelson, Aaron Neville, Randy Newman, Joanna Newsom, Juice Newton, Wayne Newton, Olivia Newton-John, Dolly Parton, Bernadette Peters, Bonnie Raitt, LeAnn Rimes, Linda Ronstadt, Diana Ross, Santana, Carly Simon, Rod Stewart, Sting, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, James Taylor, Toto, Dionne Warwick, The Weather Girls, Robbie Williams, Brian Wilson, Wilson Phillips, and Warren Zevon. He’s also done music for a bunch of TV shows and movies like The A-Team, ALF, Coyote Ugly, Groundhog Day, Legally Blonde, Magnum PI, Muppets Most Wanted, and The Prince of Egypt. He’s been around!
RE: Fact #24 (The British Empire’s Vast Reach) – Back in 1921, a whopping 25% of the world’s population was under British control.
RE: Fact #50 (Hendrix’s Astonishing First Gig) – I read two books on Hendrix, dude was totally obsessed with the guitar. He’d play for hours every day, all the time.
He’d do a show, then find people to jam with all night, sleep for a few hours, wake up and play some more, then do another show, find another jam.
It’s easy to see Jimi Hendrix as some kind of mystical freak guitar god, but when you read about how much time he spent on the guitar, it all makes sense.
RE: Fact #26 (Mountain Dew Mouse Dissolution Case) – Seriously, that guy used to fill those cans. It’s practically impossible he got in one. The way those cans fill up, it’s just not logical. There was no mouse in that can.
RE: Fact #36 (Female Gladiators Banned by Severus) – The Romans were a weird bunch – super tough in some ways, but also really uptight about other things. They were cool with women fighting to the death, but they didn’t like it when people made jokes about them.
RE: Fact #44 (The Invention Secrecy Act Rules) – nuclear weapons design, cryptographic and encoding techniques, stealthy manufacturing techniques.
RE: Fact #21 (Michael Bay’s Phone Booth Pitch) – Back in the 60s, Larry Cohen wanted to make a movie with Alfred Hitchcock. The idea was to film the whole thing in real time, and it would all take place inside a phone booth. Hitchcock thought it was cool, but they couldn’t figure out a way to make the story work with everyone stuck in one spot. Cohen said Hitchcock kept asking him if he had an idea, and they’d meet up now and then to talk about it. It took a while, like twenty years after Hitchcock died, before Cohen finally figured it out. He realized he could have a sniper forcing the main character to stay in the phone booth, and that’s when he wrote the script.
RE: Fact #35 (Self-Sued Search Warrant Victory) – Every little thing matters in law.
RE: Fact #33 (Nazi Infant Care Controversy) – It’s like that saying, “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” but instead of spanking, you just kinda… ignore them.
RE: Fact #31 (Ford Model T’s Price Drop) – Ford really focused on making things better all the time, and they used the assembly line, which helped bring down the price.
RE: Fact #17 (Benefits of Dog Sniff Walks) – My dog doesn’t just sniff the ground, he practically sticks his whole face to one spot for ages, then has a sneezing fit that lasts forever!
RE: Fact #14 (Jimmy Carter’s UFO Pledge) – Didn’t Clinton, Obama, and Trump all kind of say the same thing?
RE: Fact #45 (Hot Water Preference in China) – A whole bunch of Chinese folks came to train with us for half a year, and we ended up taking out one of the water coolers. Turns out, they were going the whole day without drinking anything because the water was too cold.
RE: Fact #27 (Ancient Earth’s Stronger Magnetic Field) – Will the Earth’s magnetic core ever stop spinning and leave us with a thin atmosphere like Mars?
RE: Fact #12 (The Double Execution Case) – People have definitely been messed up in executions before, but I’ve never heard anyone say they already served their sentence because of a botched execution. There was this guy who was supposed to be hanged, so he decided to pack on the pounds while he was on death row, hoping he’d get too heavy to hang. He ended up dying from health issues before they could hang him.
RE: Fact #41 (The 1939 Pet Massacre in Britain) – The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel almost disappeared because of this culling.
RE: Fact #6 (Bassist’s Clever Placebo Switch) – Set designers do that. The big bosses like to feel like they’re in charge, so you put something out of place that’s easy to fix when they come by looking for something to change.
“Wait, why’s there a pink flower on that coffin in this horror movie? You know, you’re totally right! Good catch!”
RE: Fact #36 (Female Gladiators Banned by Severus) – Even female gamers back then got a lot of crap.
RE: Fact #22 (Baretop Tricksters’ Robbery Tactic) – I’d get crushed every time.
RE: Fact #43 (Hitler’s Stateless Years Explained) – You know, the funniest thing about all this is that one time Wilhelm Frick, this early Nazi guy who was already in the German government, tried to get Hitler a job as an art professor. He wanted to get him a gig at the Bauhaus school in Weimar, but it didn’t work out because the government didn’t want to hire anyone new. Talk about a guy who just can’t catch a break in the art world!
RE: Fact #24 (The British Empire’s Vast Reach) – To be honest, the Roman Empire wasn’t that huge when you look at the map. Places like Australia and Brazil are bigger today, and even most European colonial empires like the French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish empires were way bigger.
RE: Fact #5 (Early Cryonics’ Financial Downfall) – So, I was reading about this guy, Orville Richardson, who was a member of this cryonics group called Alcor. He died in 2009, and his siblings buried him even though he had made a deal with Alcor to have his head frozen. Alcor sued them to get his body dug up, and after a whole bunch of legal stuff, they finally got it back a year later. I mean, even if you believe in cryonics, I’m pretty sure after a year in the ground, there’s nothing left to freeze!