1 Buchenwald Prisoner Calls Allies
On April 8, 1945, a prisoner at the Buchenwald concentration camp rigged a radio transmitter and sent a desperate message to the Allies for rescue. Three minutes later, the US Army replied, “KZ Bu. Hold out. Rushing to your aid. Staff of Third Army.” Consequently, the camp was liberated three days later.
2. When American soldiers were headed to Europe during World War II, Hector Boiardi and his brothers Paul and Mario kept their factory open 24/7 to produce enough meals. As a result, Chef Boyardee’s canned ravioli fed countless soldiers, and his company became the largest supplier of rations during the war.
3. After the authorities executed Joan of Arc on charges of heresy, her mother dedicated 25 years to clearing her name. Subsequently, she convinced the pope to reopen Joan’s case and attended the retrial despite being in her 70s and in poor health. Ultimately, the retrial resulted in Joan’s complete acquittal.
4. Currently (as of February 2025), Gabe Newell owns a marine research company and now spends most of his time at sea on his boats and submarines.
5. After canceling on a prior project, Mike Myers faced a lawsuit, which led him to act in Cat in the Hat. He settled, and one of the terms of the agreement was that he would take the lead in another film by director Bo Welch, who ended up directing The Cat in the Hat.
6 Cold War Spy Friendship Forms
During the Cold War, KGB agent Gennadiy Vasilenko and CIA agent Jack Platt became friends while attempting to recruit one another to become double agents. Interestingly, they both recognized that the other was a spy, yet they refrained from talking about it.
7. Intoxicated partygoers frequently behave wildly on hotel balconies in Ibiza, a phenomenon known as “balconing,” which frequently results in injuries or fatalities.
8. Andrew Carnegie, one of the original billionaires, dedicated 90% of his fortune to building over 3,000 libraries worldwide. Notably, he believed that free libraries provided the education necessary to achieve wealth.
9. Purple traditionally symbolizes royalty because, in Ancient Rome, purple dye was produced by milking and fermenting snail liquid. Remarkably, it took 12,000 snails to produce just one gram of dye, which led the Caesars to declare the color exclusively theirs.
10. In 2004, there was a reality show named The Swan, which aimed to transform participants from “ugly ducklings” into “swans” through extreme makeovers, including plastic surgery, in preparation for a final beauty pageant.
11 Tragic Forgiveness Turns Fatal
In 1996, a 17-year-old Travis Lewis killed Sally McKay on her property. Nevertheless, Sally’s daughter, Martha, believed in forgiveness and reached out to him in prison, offering continuous support until his parole in 2018. Moreover, she provided him as well as his mother with a job on her property later. Unfortunately, Travis murdered Martha in that same home in 2020.
12. In 2013, the first known instance of a storm chaser or meteorologist being killed by a tornado occurred near El Reno, Oklahoma. In this tragic event, Tim Samaras, his son Paul, and Carl Young lost their lives when the widest tornado ever recorded struck. Notably, the tornado expanded from 1 mile to 2.6 miles wide in about 30 seconds as it closed in on them.
13. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) remains the most expensive independent film ever made, with a production budget of approximately $180 million. Although it grossed $226 million worldwide, the film proved to be a box-office bomb because its high production and advertising costs outweighed its earnings.
14. Major music labels successfully sued a man named Joel Tenenbaum for illegally downloading and sharing 30 of their songs. Consequently, a jury ordered him to pay $675,000 (or $22,000 per song), which forced him to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2015. Ultimately, a judge discharged the $675,000 judgment in 2016.
15. After filming The Doors, Val Kilmer sought therapy because he could not shake his Jim Morrison persona and accent.
16 DNA Test Uncovers Lost Uncle
In 2020, a woman took an online DNA test that revealed a 22% match with a man. Subsequently, she found out that he was her uncle, who survived a kidnapping in 1951 at the age of six and remained missing for 70 years. After abducting him in Oakland, kidnappers flew him to the East Coast and raised him there.
17. MGM executives labeled Judy Garland as an “ugly duckling” and “little hunchback.” Moreover, they forced her to wear dental caps and rubber disks on her nose, frequently fed her a diet of chicken soup and coffee to prevent weight gain, and allegedly administered amphetamines and barbiturates during her childhood.
18. Notably, ten US states do not perform any vehicle inspections, which means they do not conduct safety, emissions, or VIN checks.
19. In 2010, a doctor and his son happened to walk by an apartment building in Paris when a 15-month-old boy fell 80 feet (24 meters) from a seventh-floor balcony. Fortunately, the boy bounced off a cafe awning and landed in the doctor’s arms, miraculously escaping without a single scratch.
20. After New York Jets player John Schmitt won Super Bowl III (1968), he lost his Super Bowl ring while surfing. Remarkably, a lifeguard found the ring in the ocean while snorkeling 40 years later and returned it to him.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 ELIZA Outperforms Modern AI
In the 1960s, MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a chatbot that simulated a psychotherapist. Consequently, some users-even Weizenbaum’s secretary-became emotionally attached to it, and in 2023, ELIZA even outperformed GPT-3.5 in a Turing test study.
22. Hyperforeignism occurs when people mispronounce foreign words that are simpler than they assume. For instance, individuals often mispronounce words such as habanero, coup de grâce, and Beijing.
23. In 1996, a disgruntled designer for the video game SimCopter created an Easter egg that spawned “shirtless men in Speedo trunks who hugged and kissed each other” on specific dates like Friday the 13th. However, his RNG malfunctioned, causing them to appear frequently.
24. Remarkably, Charles Douglass worked in his garage and produced nearly every TV sitcom laugh track using a mysterious invention known as the laff box. Notably, he secured it with padlocks; the device stood over two feet tall and operated like an organ.
25. Birds possess pneumatic bones, which means that even if they experience a blocked windpipe, an exposed broken bone can gather oxygen from the air, effectively serving as a “bone snorkel” and preventing suffocation.
RE: Fact #30 (Air Traffic Controller Age Limits) – Turning 31 means you could max out your pension by 56 after 25 years. Lots of people still love their jobs and try to stick around past retirement. Air traffic controllers are having a rough time now, but it’s awesome work. It’s a tough learning curve, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
It was a great job, but after 20 years of short staffing, more and more work, and crazy inflation—while other aviation unions got 40% raises and we lost money—I’m kind of over it. COVID wasn’t so bad, though.
Seven and a half years until retirement, and I can’t wait!
RE: Fact #14 (Tenenbaum Faces Massive Lawsuit) – Sony BMG, Warner Bros., Atlantic, Arista, and UMG all teamed up to sue Joel Tenenbaum for illegally downloading and sharing music, breaking US copyright laws. This was only the second file-sharing case to go to trial in the RIAA’s big anti-downloading push. The 30 songs he shared included tracks from Incubus, Green Day, Outkast, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Blink-182, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Deftones, The Fugees, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beck, Eminem, Beastie Boys, The Ramones, Monster Magnet, Rage Against the Machine, and Aerosmith, among others.
Loads of people online trashed my music taste because of those 30 songs the RIAA randomly grabbed from my shared files.
RE: Fact #39 (Rogue Wave Sinks MV Derbyshire) – It’s a shame, but there was nothing anyone could do to stop the Derbyshire from sinking. On September 9th, 1980, she was caught in Typhoon Orchid, about 230 miles from Okinawa, and everyone on board died. She never even sent out a mayday. The ship was following a commercial weather routing company’s advice.
A search team spent over 40 days looking for clues, taking pictures and examining wreckage. They figured out that waves had ripped off some small ventilation covers near the bow. Over the next couple of days, water poured in through the open pipes, making the bow sink lower and lower. Finally, huge waves hit the bow, smashing in a big hatch on the first cargo hold – hundreds of tons of water flooded in instantly. Then the other hatches gave way, and the ship went down fast. The pressure from the water twisted and broke the ship apart – something that can happen to double-hulled ships.
The official investigation said the ship sank because of structural problems and that the crew weren’t at fault. They even figured out exactly what happened.
No mention of a massive rogue wave then, huh?
Back in 2007, sailor and writer Craig B. Smith backed up Faulkner’s 1998 findings. They figured the Derbyshire took a hit from about 20 meters of water, which is a serious 201 kilopascals of pressure. Think of it like 20 meters of seawater pouring over the ship. The problem was the deck cargo hatches; they just couldn’t handle that kind of pressure. They were only built to withstand about 2 meters of water, or 17.1 kilopascals—the typhoon put more than ten times the design pressure on them! Everyone agrees now that the analysis of the Derbyshire wreck is spot-on.
RE: Fact #34 (Erection Contains Massive Blood Volume) – It’s either brains or brawn, not both at once.
Robin Williams
RE: Fact #35 (Joey Sitcom’s Unseen Final Episodes) – Wow, a second season? That had to be written into the contract, right?
RE: Fact #14 (Tenenbaum Faces Massive Lawsuit) – So, a lawyer buddy of mine who handles piracy stuff told me something interesting. In Denmark, which has really tough anti-piracy laws, they only get around 1000 cases every five years. And get this—only five people were ever convicted, and that’s only because *they* admitted guilt. Seriously, *never* cop to it. Just say you don’t know anything about whoever downloaded whatever. They can’t prove it was you. “But it’s on my computer!” So what? If someone steals a knife from your house and kills someone, you’re not automatically guilty, right? It could’ve been a hacker, a friend, or even a burglar. You have no clue, and they can’t prove otherwise.
RE: Fact #48 (Gary Dahl’s Pet Rock Revolution) – He tried to repeat his pet rock win by selling “Red China Dirt”—a funny idea to sneak China into the US, a tiny bit at a time. That’s actually a brilliant idea.
I was confused, but I get it now! Thanks.
Ha! You’d be secretly sneaking a bit of Chinese dirt into the States, all disguised as something super American.
RE: Fact #46 (Airplane Cabin Pressure Boosts Farting) – As someone who flies a lot, I can totally back this up.
RE: Fact #50 (Davis Denied Invention Patent) – So, on June 10th, 1858, Ben’s patent application got shot down because, well, he was a slave and not considered a US citizen. The Attorney General’s office said neither slaves nor their owners could get patents for inventions made by slaves. Later, Joseph and Jefferson Davis tried to patent it, but no luck—they weren’t the actual inventors. Ironically, after Davis became Confederate President, he passed a law letting slaves get patent protection. Even after Ben was free, they still rejected his application on June 28th, 1864. Slave owners also failed to change the law so they could patent their slaves’ inventions, even though the Confederate States’ patent law actually let them.
Stuff like that can feel like ancient history, even though it wasn’t all that long ago. It’s a harsh reminder that progress isn’t guaranteed.
RE: Fact #10 (The Swan Extreme Makeover) – I recall one contestant was a crime scene investigator, and the producers’ best line about her was, “the most gruesome scene…was her face!”
Things got even crazier – we actually had *two* different shows running at the same time back then. One of them was Extreme Makeover.
The early 2000s were wild.
Wow, what a crazy time! The big networks were raking it in, and then they realized they could pay peanuts, skip the scripts, just film everyday folks being ridiculous, and everyone would eat it up.
RE: Fact #48 (Gary Dahl’s Pet Rock Revolution) – Mom, who kept her Pet Rock forever, said the best part was the cute little book it came with.
RE: Fact #39 (Rogue Wave Sinks MV Derbyshire) – Rogue waves are the ocean’s way of saying, “Surprise!” Picture this: you survive a typhoon, and then BAM! A sixty-six-foot wave hits you. No build-up, no nothing, just instant wipeout. Really puts things in perspective.
Rogue waves are wild. Scientists didn’t even believe they were real until 1995 when an oil rig saw a massive 84-foot one! It took until the 2000s for people to really accept it. And get this – they’ve also found evidence of “rogue holes,” which are basically giant dips in the ocean, maybe even 100 feet deep.
That’s scary.
RE: Fact #49 (Schettino’s Distraction Sparks Disaster) – That dude’s a real-life Zapp Brannigan.
RE: Fact #38 (Database Error Halts Naval Systems) – So, on September 21st, 1997, the USS Yorktown was doing some training near Cape Charles, Virginia. A crew member was messing with a fuel valve – it was physically shut, but the ship’s computer system thought it was open. He tried to fix it by entering a zero into the computer, which caused a big problem. The computer program crashed, and because other systems relied on it, everything started shutting down. The ship was basically dead in the water. Luckily, they got things running again after about three hours, and the Yorktown made it back to Norfolk.
RE: Fact #5 (Myers Lawsuit Leads to Role) – I paid my dues, now it’s your turn.
RE: Fact #42 (Sylbaris Survives Pyroclastic Flow) – That’s the actual General Zod from the Superman films.
RE: Fact #37 (Oval Office Designed for Accessibility) – I was a bit thrown at first, since the White House looks the same as it always has, but this was in the West Wing. Turns out, it’s pretty much hidden from view by trees.
RE: Fact #11 (Tragic Forgiveness Turns Fatal) – It’s one thing to forgive someone for murder after all this time, but it’s a whole different ball game letting them back into your life and your house.
I lived with the guy I’m pretty sure killed my mom.
My uncle (by marriage) moved in with Grandma after my aunt died. Years later, Mom started dating him. It didn’t last. Then Mom got really into drinking and saw him again a few years after that. She was awful when she drank—mean, insulting, the whole nine yards. One weekend, my brother was out of town, Grandma was working out of state, and I’d already moved away.
Grandma called to say Mom drowned in her pool while drunk. Uncle was the one who “found” her. It had happened to another family member before, so, besides being sad, we didn’t think much of it. But I needed her death certificate for legal stuff. The coroner wouldn’t release it, finally talking to me. They couldn’t call it an accident; Mom had scrapes on her hands, it looked like there’d been a fight, but they didn’t have enough evidence to say it was murder.
Years later, my husband and I lost our jobs. I wanted to go back to school, so we moved in with Grandma.
Uncle still lived there. He was a mess. At the time, I figured it was because of losing my aunt and then Mom. But I started noticing things—like how he’d miss weeks of work, and his job didn’t seem to care where he was. He’d been there thirty years; he could do whatever he wanted. He had a terrible temper, almost got into fights with my husband a few times (only backing down because my husband was younger and bigger). He had a lot of guns. When I found out, I called his sister to get them taken away. I didn’t want to live in a house with a drunk guy who owned a bunch of guns.
He died in that house—a stroke, probably from all the drinking. He kept a gun, a revolver, half-loaded, on his nightstand.
I guess we were lucky.
RE: Fact #27 (Kennedy Jacket Hidden Until 2103) – She wouldn’t change her clothes, even when her assistants told her to. She kept saying, “Nope, I’m staying in this outfit. I want them to see what they’ve done!” That’s what she wanted everyone to see, but people kept editing her pictures to hide it.
RE: Fact #22 (Hyperforeignism: Mispronouncing Foreign Words) – We put a lot of effort into teaching tourists the right way to say Hawaiian place names. It’s not “Like Like” highway, it’s “Lee-kay Lee-kay,” and so on. They usually get it eventually, then they’ll be all excited about “Pee-pa-ylee-nay” beach, and we have to tell them, “Nope, it’s Pipe Line.”
RE: Fact #4 (Gabe Newell Embraces Marine Life) – Out on the open ocean, it’s pretty much a free-for-all. A few more steps and you’re a pirate! AAARRRRR!
RE: Fact #19 (Paris Balcony Fall Miraculously Ends) – The parents left their toddler and four-year-old alone to go shopping, and ended up facing charges for neglecting them.
Dr. Bensignor, 58, was just walking his seven-year-old son, Raphaël, when they saw it happen. It was pure luck.
He credits Raphaël with the rescue. They were walking and chatting when Raphaël pointed out the kids on the balcony. He calmly said, “Dad, did you see those kids on the balcony?” Dr. Bensignor looked up just as the baby fell.
RE: Fact #44 (Americans Over Seven Feet Rare) – This guy I knew from high school was huge—seven foot one, all elbows and knees—and he played goalie for the soccer team. Total Jack Skellington lookalike in a jersey.
RE: Fact #21 (ELIZA Outperforms Modern AI) – Eliza’s built into EMACS, so give it a whirl if you like.
RE: Fact #1 (Buchenwald Prisoner Calls Allies) – “We’re on our way.” 😭
RE: Fact #14 (Tenenbaum Faces Massive Lawsuit) – Hey, I know Joel! He’s a teacher now—I worked with him for ages. Great guy. He really doesn’t want to discuss this story.
Seriously, I followed that case as it unfolded – total injustice. The law’s way behind the times.
RE: Fact #33 (NYC Subway Uses Left-Screw Bulbs) – My hot water heater crapped out—the thermocouple went kaput, so the pilot light wouldn’t stay lit. I grabbed a cheap replacement at Home Depot, but it wouldn’t screw in—wrong threads! Went back, nobody had a clue. Same thing at Lowe’s. Finally, this tiny, old-school hardware store, run by a guy who looked like he was 90, told me the whole story: cheap hot water heaters with crappy thermocouples they designed to break easily. Only *they* sold the replacements—five times the price! Turns out they got sued and stopped making them. So, the company’s sending me a free adapter, but it’ll take two or three weeks. Or I can pay seventy bucks for overnight shipping. This was ages ago, probably almost twenty years—Whirlpool, by the way.
Had the same problem with my old washing machine. Same brand, I think. A replacement part would’ve cost more than a new washer and taken forever to arrive. The only place to get it was directly from the manufacturer, and they wouldn’t sell it to you unless you were a repair technician or something. Local repair shops wouldn’t touch it unless they ordered the part—at a huge markup on top of the manufacturer’s already crazy price! It’s insane how consumer protection laws let this happen.
RE: Fact #30 (Air Traffic Controller Age Limits) – Yeah, it’s true, mental sharpness fades with age. I’ve seen it firsthand with air traffic controllers nearing retirement—they were still safe, just not as sharp or fast as before. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but 56’s a pretty good age to call it a day, on average.
That 31-year limit? It’s to give people a fair chance at getting their full pension. You need 20 years and to be at least 50 for the basic pension, or 25 years at any age. The longer you work, the better the payout.
I got to see how an FAA traffic control center really works – crazy busy! Those air traffic controllers are seriously tough; I get why they have those strict shifts now. They deserve all the pay and pension they get.
We’re taking a beating, but it’s good when people see what’s really happening.
RE: Fact #32 (Alaska’s High Missing Persons Rate) – The bears know their locations.
RE: Fact #47 (Siblings Show Varying DNA Results) – I’m a bioinformatician, so this isn’t surprising at all. Here’s the quick rundown: We each get 23 pairs of chromosomes – half from Mom, half from Dad. But things get mixed up during cell division (a process called crossing over) where chromosomes swap DNA bits. It’s all pretty random which bits you get from each parent, and which bits get swapped. So, while you get 50% from each parent, it’s not a neat 25% from each grandparent. Even if you inherit a chromosome from the same grandparent, it might be slightly different. There’s no such thing as an “Irish gene” or a “Polish gene”—it’s all about gene combinations and variations that are statistically linked to certain populations. Your DNA inheritance follows rules, but only identical twins are truly similar. Ancestry tests are useful, but rely on statistics and aren’t super precise for individuals. Plus, tons of migration and mixing throughout history has scrambled everyone’s genetic background. Nationality is also tied to culture and language, which aren’t always directly related to genetics, making ancestry even trickier to figure out.
Seriously, I always challenge people who think being Italian automatically makes them a great cook, or being Irish means they’re short-tempered. We’re not video game characters with special skills based on our heritage! Your background doesn’t decide what you’re good at.
RE: Fact #23 (SimCopter Easter Egg Glitch) – Haha, totally forgot about that! What a game, though. I remember importing my SC2000 cities, flying around, and then – get this – swapping the game disc for a music CD! Blew my mind back then.
RE: Fact #49 (Schettino’s Distraction Sparks Disaster) – I was on this cruise, and the captain was totally wasted, partying with everyone. It was super weird and wrong, and it really stuck with me. Then, a couple years later, I read about a boating accident and immediately thought, “no way…” Turns out, it was the same guy. That kind of thing was probably pretty common there, not some one-off thing. I don’t know if I could have done anything about it, but I still think about it.
The whole crew’s plastered, and a lot of them are newbies who’ve never even seen a sail. Been on cruise ships myself, and that’s the last time.
RE: Fact #24 (Douglass Invents the Laff Box) – His special “laff box” – that’s what everyone called it – was locked up tight, stood taller than two feet, and worked kinda like an organ. Douglass used a typewriter-style keyboard to pick the laugh’s style, gender, and age, and a foot pedal to control how long it lasted.
RE: Fact #14 (Tenenbaum Faces Massive Lawsuit) – So now tech companies want to use all creative stuff for free to train their AI.
RE: Fact #23 (SimCopter Easter Egg Glitch) – I remember playing that game! It was awesome, lol. You could do riot control, put out fires—all sorts of stuff.
RE: Fact #3 (Joan of Arc Acquitted Posthumously) – The love she felt for her daughter is just heartbreaking. What she said about her daughter was so sad. She talked about raising her daughter well, baptizing and confirming her, teaching her faith and respect for the Church. Then, she described how her daughter was condemned and burned at the stake without any fair trial, calling it a terrible injustice.
RE: Fact #46 (Airplane Cabin Pressure Boosts Farting) – Your hands and feet will puff up, making tight shoes a pain. And guys, supposedly, their bits get a little bigger. Haven’t checked that one myself though.
As a guy, I can tell you random, awkward boners happen a lot on planes, even if you’re not turned on.
We’re stuck in a cramped metal tube with… well, let’s just say things are a bit intense.
RE: Fact #27 (Kennedy Jacket Hidden Until 2103) – Seriously, is it that weird her daughter didn’t want to meet fans who took selfies with her mom’s bloody clothes, just ’cause they’re supposedly iconic?
RE: Fact #45 (Hirohito Renounces Divine Status) – He had no idea a simple “sike” would do the trick later on.
RE: Fact #28 (Wearing’s Memory Resets Frequently) – My aunt’s boyfriend had a motorcycle wreck and lost his short-term memory. Visiting him in the hospital was strange; every few minutes he’d forget where he was and what happened, even weeks later. After a while, people just stopped going to see him.
RE: Fact #18 (Ten States Skip Vehicle Inspections) – That’s wild, Arizona driver’s licenses are good for forty whole years before you need a new one!
RE: Fact #28 (Wearing’s Memory Resets Frequently) – Ten years ago, I wiped out pretty badly longboarding. The next thing I knew, I was in the ER and Mom was freaking out. My first words? “Oh hi Mom! I was in an accident, wasn’t I?” Apparently, I’d been saying that over and over.
Seriously, that sounds awful. I can’t even imagine.
Wear your safety gear, people! I should have been wearing a helmet.
RE: Fact #41 (London’s Rare White Christmases) – A super cold snap, the Little Ice Age, is why people think of London having white Christmases. It’s what inspired writers like Dickens and things like the Thames frost fairs. I’ve lived in London forever, and I can’t recall a Christmas Day snowfall, though there was snow around Christmas a few times. This year, we only had a couple of snowy days a couple of weeks ago.
RE: Fact #17 (Judy Garland Endured MGM Abuse) – If you haven’t seen this amazing performance, it’s incredible — especially since it was done after a suicide attempt.
RE: Fact #4 (Gabe Newell Embraces Marine Life) – He’s got a crazy huge collection of superyachts, like, a billion dollars worth.
RE: Fact #45 (Hirohito Renounces Divine Status) – Japan’s emperors have been around for over 2500 years, the longest unbroken line anywhere! A big reason for that is people believed the Emperor was divine. Other powerful people never tried to become Emperor; they took different titles, like Shogun. The Imperial House of Japan is so old, they don’t even need a dynasty name—it’s just *the* Imperial House.
RE: Fact #11 (Tragic Forgiveness Turns Fatal) – It’s good to let go of anger and grief. Forgiving’s not required, but it can help. And it’s super important to set limits with people who’ve hurt you so it doesn’t happen again. That’s why I won’t hire anyone who killed someone I cared about.
RE: Fact #40 (Dr. Pepper’s Broken Album Promise) – I’m surprised they didn’t get insurance first, before making that claim. It’s standard practice for giveaways like “free mattress if the Orioles win!”
RE: Fact #42 (Sylbaris Survives Pyroclastic Flow) – Smart and lucky, equal amounts. I can’t even guess what was going on in his head for those four days – total chaos!
RE: Fact #31 (Ming History Sparks Executions) – The author’s family, everyone who published or owned the book, and even officials who ignored it—they all got killed. The author himself croaked before it even came out. The whole thing was a big deal because it was way too disrespectful to the royals.
RE: Fact #15 (Kilmer Struggles with Morrison Persona) – He couldn’t ditch the accent and the way he acted, not the character itself—happens all the time with actors. Even with months of accent coaching, some bits can linger.
RE: Fact #49 (Schettino’s Distraction Sparks Disaster) – There’s a YouTube documentary about it. The Coast Guard told him to get back on the boat, but he made excuses and ditched them. He was the first one to reach the coast, and everyone started calling him Captain Coward because of his dumb stuff.
RE: Fact #17 (Judy Garland Endured MGM Abuse) – I watched a video of Ray Bolger and Judy Garland on her show—they showed old photos from *The Wizard of Oz* filming, and she called herself a “fat, ugly little girl.” Ray totally shut that down. It’s heartbreaking, because she was gorgeous as Dorothy, and even later in life. What they made her go through to play Dorothy was awful.
RE: Fact #1 (Buchenwald Prisoner Calls Allies) –
Three minutes felt like a lifetime after hitting send, wondering if anyone would even see my message.
So, “KZ Bu”? That’s not some secret code – it’s short for “Konzentrationslager-Buchenwald.” The 3rd Army guys either knew German or had a pretty good heads-up about what was coming.
RE: Fact #18 (Ten States Skip Vehicle Inspections) – My friend from Pennsylvania moved to Kansas for a job. The mechanic he used for his car inspection was totally baffled by what he needed. “Inspect…what?”
RE: Fact #48 (Gary Dahl’s Pet Rock Revolution) – It’s pretty limited. Then you had to add something extra, like carving your rock and covering it with cheap seeds.
RE: Fact #21 (ELIZA Outperforms Modern AI) – I’m not great at chatting. Asking questions is a simple but effective way to keep things going. It’s funny how well that bot did just by doing that!
RE: Fact #36 (Hippie Trail Offered Alternative Travel) – Hitchhiking through Iran and Afghanistan isn’t as much fun as it once was.
RE: Fact #9 (Purple Dye Reserved for Caesars) – Back then, a serious insult was calling someone a “Tyrian,” because those folks boiled snails, and the smell was awful—it stank up the whole area!
RE: Fact #12 (Deadly Tornado Claims Storm Chasers) – It grew 1.6 miles wide in just 30 seconds? Whoa!
RE: Fact #35 (Joey Sitcom’s Unseen Final Episodes) – Matt LeBlanc’s not a bad actor, but they really overdid Joey’s character by the end of Friends, and I’m not sure how you’d even improve on that.
Joey, Mr. “Friends” ladies’ man, moved to LA – a city packed with gorgeous women – and couldn’t snag a date.
RE: Fact #31 (Ming History Sparks Executions) – He really messed up. He didn’t know much about Ming history, so he started with what he could find—a Ming history draft by Zhu Guozhen. Then, he hired sixteen scholars from Jiangnan, including Wu Yan and Pan Chengzhang, to help polish and expand it.
The book had some seriously offensive stuff about the Ming and Qing dynasties. Things like using Ming emperor titles, denying the Qing’s legitimacy, calling the Manchus “barbarians,” and using the Qing emperors’ personal names.
Seventy-two people were put to death—Zhuang Tingyue, Mao Yuanming, Jiang Linzheng, Zhang Gao, Wei Yuanjie, Pan Chengzhang, Wu Yan, Wu Zhirong, Wu Zhiming, and others were executed by lingchi. Song Kui and Zhu Changzuo, along with their staff, lost their jobs. Cheng Weifan was executed for covering up bribes. Two teachers were executed too. Chen Yongming was exiled and killed himself on the way, his body sent back to Hangzhou for dismemberment. His brother, Chen Yonglai, was executed. Wang Zhaozhen, Li Huan, and Tan Ximin were hanged, and their families exiled.
Wu Zhirong, who ratted out the book, got Zhuang Yuncheng and Zhu Youming’s wealth as a reward.
RE: Fact #29 (WhatsApp Founders Strike Billionaire Deal) – Lots of people trust Mark Zuckerberg to keep an eye on their messages, even though they could just use Facebook Messenger – it’s basically the same thing, both are watched by Facebook.