1 Ted Danson’s Billboard Protest
When actor Ted Danson was 11 years old, he and his friends chopped down several billboards around Flagstaff, Arizona, because they obstructed the view of nature. He was caught after his father, a museum curator, noticed that the billboards for the Museum of Northern Arizona were mysteriously spared.
2. In 2023, two men sued Universal Studios for $5 million over false advertising after paying $3.99 each to watch the film Yesterday, only to discover that Ana de Armas, who appeared in the trailer, was not in the movie.
3. The Nazis allowed General Erwin Rommel to take cyanide after implicating him in a plot to kill Hitler. To maintain morale, they staged a state funeral and falsely claimed he had died from war injuries.
4. In Japan, people known as the Johatsu-which means “evaporated people”-deliberately abandon their lives due to family strain, work pressure, or personal reasons. Specialized “night-moving” companies assist these individuals in disappearing without a trace and reestablishing their lives elsewhere.
5. In 1813, Sequoyah, an illiterate Cherokee warrior, observed the “talking leaves” (writing) of white men and believed it provided a military advantage. In 1821, driven by his determination to establish a written system for his own people, he meticulously crafted a Cherokee syllabary. Within just nine years, Cherokee literacy exceeded 90%.
6 Teen Solves 1964 Murder Case
In 2022, 18-year-old college freshman Eric Schubert, who pursued genealogical research as a hobby, solved the 1964 murder of a 9-year-old girl in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Over 18 months, he constructed 50 complete family trees to trace a connection to Hazleton, ultimately identifying the culprit, James Forte.
7. Chess player and Twitch streamer Anna Cramling created her own opening, “The Cow,” in 2023. In 2024, for the first time, she faced an opponent who used it against her-and lost.
8. Ecologist Suzanne Simard set out to understand why forests became unhealthy whenever foresters removed birch trees, which were believed to harm fir trees. Her research revealed that birch trees actually transfer nutrients to fir trees through an underground fungal network, maintaining the ecosystem’s balance.
9. Warren Buffett accumulated over 99% of his net wealth after turning 56.
10. Four years after receiving a bone marrow transplant, a Nevada man named Chris Long discovered that the DNA in his blood and semen had been completely replaced by that of his donor.
11 Alan Turing’s Olympic-Level Running
Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, was an elite runner who nearly qualified for the Olympic marathon. He completed the race in 2 hours and 46 minutes, averaging an impressive 6 minutes and 20 seconds per mile.
12. In 2001, Army Major Charles Ingram cheated his way to winning £1,000,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? by relying on a fellow contestant to cough whenever he read the correct answer. For one question, the coughing even came from Ingram’s wife. All three were later convicted of fraud.
13. During the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 from Cairo to San Diego, the jet was forced to land in Algeria for refueling. When Algerian authorities demanded payment upfront, the lead flight attendant had to purchase 6,000 gallons of jet fuel using her personal credit card.
14. Just weeks before Marlon Brando’s death, three newcomers took control of his estate. They reclaimed assets promised to friends, sold his island, commercialized his image, and shut down fan-run pages. Under their management, Brando’s eldest son couldn’t even afford the funeral.
15. In 1997, Kathleen Caronna fell into a month-long coma after a Thanksgiving Day parade float knocked a lamppost onto her head. She later used the settlement money to buy a lovely apartment, but nine years later, Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his plane into her high-rise, and the engine landed in her bedroom.
16 Can-Can Dance Once Scandalous
The Can-Can was once considered scandalous, prompting authorities to attempt to suppress it and arrest performers. The dance featured high kicks, and at the time, women’s underwear had an open crotch.
17. Thomas Gilbert Jr., a 30-year-old Princeton graduate who was unemployed, killed his wealthy father in 2015 after his weekly allowance dropped from $1,000 to $300. He was later sentenced to 30 years in prison.
18. More than 55% of the world’s population aged 15 and older cannot swim.
19. After doctors removed a mass from a 47-year-old man’s lung, believing it to be a malignant tumor, they discovered it was actually a Playmobil toy traffic cone. He had swallowed it on his 7th birthday in 1974, but his airway had adapted, which likely prevented symptoms until he was 40.
20. In Lynchburg, Tennessee, home to the Jack Daniel’s distillery, it is illegal to buy Jack Daniel’s whiskey. The county, being “dry,” permits the distillation of alcohol but prohibits its sale.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Michael Jackson Buys Beatles Catalog
In 1985, Michael Jackson purchased the Lennon-McCartney song catalog for $47.5 million and later licensed the songs for various commercials, which saddened Paul McCartney. Reportedly frustrated by McCartney’s reaction, Jackson stated, “If he didn’t want to invest $47.5 million in his own songs, then he shouldn’t come crying to me now.”
22. Arnold Schwarzenegger became the first civilian in the United States to purchase a Humvee military vehicle. Arnold Schwarzenegger loved the Humvee so much that he persuaded the manufacturer to develop a street-legal civilian version, which became the Hummer H1 in 1992.
23. According to a BBC report, men in the UAE used 80% of their personal loans to pay for wedding expenses. As a result, many Emirati men chose to marry “less demanding” foreign women. In response, the government created a fund that provided financial assistance to grooms who married Emirati brides.
24. After Ludwig van Beethoven became functionally deaf, his associates used notebooks to communicate with him. Historians have since reconstructed entire conversations based on the entries they left behind.
25. In 2006, thieves in Buenos Aires tunneled beneath a bank and broke into its vault. After a seven-hour standoff with 23 hostages, authorities entered the building only to find $20 million missing, a row of toy guns, and a note that read, “In a neighborhood of rich people, without weapons or grudges, it’s just money, not love.”
RE: Fact #20 (Jack Daniel’s Illegal in Hometown) – A buddy of mine who used to work there said the distillery’s got a museum and a shop. They’ll even fill an empty collector’s bottle with bourbon for free – a little something extra, if you know what I mean.
I was there last April, and seriously, you can get it in collector’s bottles at the shop.
They don’t let you drink there, but the tour ends with a whiskey tasting and a lesson on their different whiskeys. It’s like a class!
They’ll give you a bottle of JD whiskey for free if you pay around $25 for the bottle itself.
Nah, officer, just some sweet used plastic bags!
RE: Fact #31 (‘That’s What She Said’ Origin) –
I think stuff like that appeals to our inner goofballs, like David Brent or Michael Scott. It’s similar to the “title of your sex tape” bit from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
The phrase “that’s what she said” was around before the 70s, and Wayne’s World on SNL, and the movie, used it a ton. Wayne says it after Garth complains about holding a picture for too long.
It kinda bugged me when Tina Fey said Steve Carell “owns” “that’s what she said,” especially since other SNL people used it way back when. I bet they picked it for his character in *The Office* because it was so obviously a tired old joke.
Tina Fey probably meant he took a pretty unoriginal joke and made it a key part of a really popular character’s personality. He totally improved the joke—it’s like how everyone says Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt” is the definitive one now, after he covered it.
Tobias and Michael in Arrested Development.
“I just blew myself.”
“There’s gotta be a better way to say that.”
“Title of your sextape,” haha
RE: Fact #7 (Anna Cramling’s Chess Opening Loss) – Her opponent was a 2495 FIDE player, so it’s no wonder she lost, opening aside.
That opening was really weak, so the huge ratings difference is kinda surprising.
Magnus is famous for using bad openings to throw opponents off their game, then just outplaying them later on. It’s different here, since Anna messed up the opening, but you can still win even with a bad start.
RE: Fact #49 (Eisenhower’s Stress Before D-Day) – He made it to 78, then died of congestive heart failure. I bet he wasn’t pounding the coffee and cigarettes as much when things were easier, but hey.
He had a heart attack at 64 and had to really change how he lived and eat super healthy. Even then, he still had seven more heart attacks in his last fourteen years. He lived a long time, but the end wasn’t easy.
RE: Fact #41 (Saddam Hussein’s 100% Vote Win) – Saddam somehow missed voting in the last referendum.
Saddam: “Anyone who doesn’t vote for me is dead meat!”
Advisor: “Uh, sir, you didn’t vote.”
Saddam, pulling out his sword: “My word is law!”
He gets it.
That would have been a whole lot easier.
RE: Fact #2 (Lawsuit Over Misleading Movie Trailer) – Remember that Robin Williams “Shake that rubber booty flubber” dance scene from the commercials? It was in every ad, but they totally left it out of the actual movie.
I’m gonna sue Disney over this.
Don’t re-rent that movie until you win your case. The judge threw it out on August 28th, saying it was your own fault. Apparently, you rented it *again* this year on Google Play, even after seeing it on Prime, just to complain about Google’s cast listing. The judge pointed out that you already admitted Ana de Armas wasn’t in the movie.
RE: Fact #10 (Bone Marrow Transplant Alters DNA) – This guy’s blood had female DNA, his kidneys had male DNA, and his spleen was a mix of both. Turns out, he got a bone marrow transplant from his daughter. Talk about a plot twist!
If this guy had a kid now, would that make his daughter the dad? Or is it impossible for him to have a kid because his sperm has her DNA?
Semen and sperm aren’t the same thing. Semen is kinda like filtered blood plasma, so it can have a different DNA profile. The sperm DNA would still be his, though. The point is, they usually test semen DNA in sex crime investigations, not sperm DNA.
It’s pretty common, actually. I heard a radio report about bone marrow transplants – the nurses told this guy to prepare to die and be reborn! They called it a “second birth” since your body has to completely rebuild everything with the new stuff. Sounds awful.
RE: Fact #44 (Portuguese Woman Disguised as Soldier) – Busted when she asked the king to marry her coworker. Rookie mistake.
RE: Fact #44 (Portuguese Woman Disguised as Soldier) – Wikipedia says it supposedly happened sometime between 1682 and 1700, but the first account didn’t show up until 1876—from someone who couldn’t have possibly known. Got any other proof?
RE: Fact #26 (Last Execution in Tower of London) – So, is he with that spy group I mentioned? The one where that couple got busted in Scotland for biking the wrong way – they had Nivea cream and German sausage! And another guy got caught because he was in a pub at 9 AM ordering cider, before they even served booze.
My favorite WWII spy story? This guy gets rejected by the British, so he tries the Nazis – and *they* say yes! Then he tells the Brits he’s a Nazi spy and wants to work for *them*. He ended up with an Iron Cross AND an MBE.
RE: Fact #31 (‘That’s What She Said’ Origin) – Steve Carell ripped it off from Wayne’s World, and Wayne’s World got it from me.
That’s what she said.
RE: Fact #24 (Beethoven’s Deafness & Conversation Notebooks) – I picked this up from the BBC Proms this year – they used his friends’ writings to paint a picture of his side of things in his conversations.
He was really protective of his nephew Karl, especially after becoming his guardian when Karl’s mom couldn’t cope.
RE: Fact #21 (Michael Jackson Buys Beatles Catalog) – Back in ’81, Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney teamed up, writing and recording some tunes together. Jackson hung out at McCartney’s place while they worked, and they became buddies. One night at dinner, McCartney showed Jackson this huge notebook filled with all his songs. Jackson got really excited, asking about buying songs and how it all worked. McCartney explained that music publishing was big business. Jackson said he’d buy the Beatles’ songs someday. McCartney just laughed and said, “Right, funny joke.”
Later, in ’84…
…someone checked with McCartney’s lawyer to see if he was going to bid. The lawyer said no, it was too expensive. The guy who handled the ATV Music sale said McCartney had first dibs but passed. Yoko Ono was also approached but didn’t bid either.
…At the time, McCartney was super rich, worth a ton of money.
After Jackson died in 2009, McCartney talked about Jackson buying the Beatles’ songs on Letterman. He said it was cool that someone finally got them, and that he hoped Jackson would give Lennon-McCartney a fair deal, since they’d been ripped off early in their career. He tried to talk to Jackson about it, but Jackson just said it was business. They didn’t really resolve things, and their friendship faded after that, but McCartney still thought Jackson was a great guy.
Seemed like he could’ve gotten a better deal himself, but he just wanted Michael to hand over the cash for free.
Money for Nothing? Totally Dire Straits!
So, this guy was the perfect person to finally give Lennon and McCartney a better deal.
Sounds like McCartney was still getting his song royalties, but instead of buying them outright, he wanted Jackson to give him a bigger share.
I think Paul didn’t really mind who got the rights; he figured he’d work it out with whoever won. Turns out it was someone he knew, and he probably thought it would be easy, but it totally messed up their friendship.
McCartney bought up Buddy Holly’s music rights with that cash. Holly was huge then, the most played artist globally.
He’s so famous, nobody can spell his name right.
RE: Fact #36 (Ancient Greeks Didn’t Consider 1 a Number) – Seriously, how did they do math back then? They were pretty smart, scientifically speaking.
So, the article says the Greeks thought of one as the “seed of numbers,” not an actual number itself. It wasn’t a multiple of anything, so they saw it as a unit.
Back then, people loved pointless arguments just like we do now. But without factrepublic, they had to get creative.
That’s a real “you’re one of us, but not *quite* one of us” vibe.
RE: Fact #28 (Cardinal Became Portuguese King) – He could’ve just become Portugal’s top church guy like Henry VIII and ditched those annoying vows.
That’d get him kicked out of the church, giving Spain a perfect excuse to invade and take over. They’d win either way, and forget the mess it would cause back home. Getting England to leave the Catholic Church was tough enough; it’d be even harder in Portugal.
Henry should’ve married into a powerful family—someone with a big army to scare off Spain.
RE: Fact #14 (Marlon Brando’s Estate Takeover) – Thirteen days before Marlon Brando died (July 1st, 2004), a new addition was made to his will. Some think he might have had dementia then. This change put Mike Medavoy (a movie guy), his brother-in-law Larry Dressler (an accountant), and Avra Douglas (a friend of Rebecca Brando’s) in charge of his $21.6 million. They replaced Brando’s old choices: JoAnn Corrales (his business manager and Christian’s guardian) and Alice Marchak (his closest friend for over 50 years). The new executors’ lawyers say the change was legit—Brando had already let Corrales go and thought Marchak was too old for the legal mess his death would cause.
One of Rebecca’s buddies is also handling the will. Weirdly, after they changed the will, they cut out Brando’s real daughter, Cheyenne, and his other adopted daughter, too.
That sneaky move is obvious from the fact that they took away the rights of both the biological and adopted daughters. There’s no other way to explain why they cut the daughters out of the deal.
It’s nuts how buried that info is in the article.
RE: Fact #24 (Beethoven’s Deafness & Conversation Notebooks) – Crazy how they can get his chats down pat, but we’re still guessing what he looked like.
He totally looked like he’d done twelve years in Azkaban.
So here we are, chatting away, completely unaware we’re both making fools of ourselves.
RE: Fact #39 (Mozart Outsold Beyoncé in 2016) – I read somewhere that if Mozart got paid for all his music, he could’ve bought the whole country of Austria! Everything!
Man, I bet that guy had some wild wigs!
RE: Fact #37 (North Face Founder’s Fatal Kayaking) – The North Face founder died doing adventurous stuff outdoors. That makes me respect the brand even more.
What a shame, the brand’s quality went downhill after he passed.
It’s hard to say what people expect for quality, huh? They still make top-notch tech gear that’s amazing – the kind used by pros in places most of us will never even visit. They also slap their name on clothes you can buy at the supermarket, and those are decent for the price. Like any big company these days, they make cheaper stuff to reach more people, and now everyone’s complaining when the $80 jacket isn’t the same as the $800 one.
RE: Fact #40 (Crazy Crab: Baseball’s Anti-Mascot) – Why do people at events always have so many batteries?
Back in the day, at those old stadiums, everyone listened to the game on their transistor radios.
Yeah, that rings a bell! I used to do that at baseball games when I was a kid. Completely forgot those things took like six D-cell batteries!
Growing up, I remember Shea Stadium being on the news about a new rule – no more throwing batteries onto the field. That was the end of an era.
RE: Fact #11 (Alan Turing’s Olympic-Level Running) – Our elite runners are way faster now—like, ten minutes faster than the Boston Marathon qualifying time for guys aged 18-34.
Turing probably ran in some seriously clunky shoes with no fancy cushioning or anything. And forget about all the fancy training and nutrition stuff we have now – he didn’t have any of that. He’d probably be a way better runner today.
He was a brilliant computer scientist, too. Not many top athletes can claim that. Things were pretty different back then, especially in sports and other fields.
RE: Fact #30 (Thomas Jefferson’s Stuffed Moose Shipment) – Were the French already pretty set up in America and Canada? Quebec City’s older than Lincoln by two centuries – lots of moose and bears back then too! It sounds like he was just bragging.
It was definitely a competition between those two fancy pants.
They were the first colonizers, and they had tons of fur trappers and traders. No way they didn’t know about moose. Europeans knew about polar bears by the 1750s.
That title’s a bit off, though. Jefferson was actually trying to win a bet against some French dude who thought American animals were smaller and worse than European ones.
It was mostly a silly competition, haha.
RE: Fact #42 (Subway Co-Founder Donates $5B Stake) – They’re the biggest fast food chain in the US, so that’s a ton of money for charity. Subway and Dollar General keep rural America fed.
RE: Fact #25 (Toy Guns, Tunnels, and $20M Heist) – Fernando Araujo, the mastermind, wanted to dodge the Ramallo disaster mess, so he hatched a crazy plan: tunnel under a bank and make a clean getaway.
Seven hours in, the police lost it and busted in. All the hostages were okay, surprisingly. But the robbers? Gone. A sealed basement hole, and $20 million from 140+ safety deposit boxes vanished.
The crew watched the police raid on TV – their heist was picture perfect. Almost. Five weeks later, Rubén Alberto de la Torre’s wife ratted him out because she found out about his affair. This led to the arrests of Araujo, Bolster, Vitette, and Zalloecheverría. But “Doc” and “Luis the Uruguayan” are still out there.
Bolster got off easy – just 25 months. Vitette got four years, then got kicked out of Argentina.
Even though they got caught, nobody did more than five years. Why? Toy guns, not real ones.
RE: Fact #47 (Gates of Arctic’s Extreme Remoteness) – Yeah, it’s bigger, but it’s way up in Alaska.
Gates of the Arctic National Park? Forget paved roads or even trails. It’s completely wild.
An average yearly low of minus 42.6 degrees? Yeah, no thanks.
I wonder if they still have park rangers there during the winter.
RE: Fact #50 (Britain’s Near-Bloodless Invasion of Iceland) – My Icelandic buddy said that when the British Navy showed up, they basically told Reykjavik’s folks, “Sorry for the invasion,” and then went and nabbed the German embassy staff and a local German teacher. Funny thing is, they let the teacher go back to proctor an exam before hauling him in.
The Icelanders got a bunch of good stuff from the British, like better trade deals, new infrastructure, and a promise the Brits would leave after the war.
That airport you fly into or out of in Reykjavik? That was a British Army base built during the occupation.
Apparently, the German ambassador went ballistic when the British showed up at his door, yelling something about Iceland being neutral. The British officer just sort of chuckled and said, “Oh yeah? Like Denmark?”
The German ambassador probably choked on his tea, hearing that!
The Icelanders really showed the UK who’s boss in those Cod Wars. It wasn’t some little squabble—fishermen were actually attacking each other, the Royal Navy got involved, and someone even died! Iceland threatened to leave NATO each time—a HUGE deal during the Cold War—to get what they wanted. And guess what? The UK backed down every single time. Iceland is seriously serious about its fish.
That comment makes it sound like Icelanders got revenge for something that was actually a pretty good thing, haha.
RE: Fact #3 (Rommel’s Forced Suicide & Funeral) – Wow, crazy story. His son was home when everything went down and wrote about it. They gave his dad a choice: a kangaroo court and death for the whole family, or a cyanide pill. If he took the pill, they’d say he died in battle, his family would be safe, and he’d get a state funeral. The officials showed up at his house, and he had, like, five minutes to decide. His son said his dad came from a meeting about a new assignment, looking completely freaked out. He went to talk to his wife, she started crying, and then he just left, without even saying anything to his son. They drove him away, and he took the pill in the car. That was it.
RE: Fact #23 (UAE Loans & Marriage Crisis) – In Thailand, it’s pretty common for couples to take out 20-year loans to cover the dowry, so they often begin married life deeply in debt.
RE: Fact #28 (Cardinal Became Portuguese King) – This paved the way for Philip II of Spain to take the throne a few years later.
Seriously, even Crusader Kings save-scumming wouldn’t let you get away with that. Philip got incredibly lucky.
That sounds cool! Tell me more. What’s so great about this Phillip guy, and what did that save-scamming thing let you do?
He also got his childless nephew, the King of Portugal, to back a pretender to the Moroccan throne—and paid for it. The promised supplies and troops never really showed up. His nephew died in the fight, leaving Philip one step closer to power. After the Cardinal kicked the bucket, he marched into Lisbon with his army to claim what was his.
So, basically, the Pope said no because he didn’t want to upset Phillip II. Phillip would’ve just grabbed Portugal himself after Henry died—which he did, just two years later.
RE: Fact #46 (Max Planck Ignored Physics Warning) – Trust science. Don’t always trust old scientists just because they’re old.
Getting old makes it tough to be fair, I guess. That’s why a lot of older folks act like anyone younger than 40 is clueless.
RE: Fact #32 (Tongyangxi: China’s Arranged Child Brides) – Yeah, my grandma was one of those child brides. She went to live with my grandpa’s family around age five, and cried so much her grandmas on both sides basically said, “Send her back to her mom!” So she lived at home until she got married. She was born in 1919, left China in 1947, and had one kid—meaning she started having kids around 20 or 22. She lived to be 101!
Because she was raised separately, their marriage seemed more arranged than anything. They had six kids and life was tough. First, they were tenant farmers, working someone else’s land while also farming a little bit of their own; then they ran a small tofu business. Because of their dialect, it always sounded like they were arguing, but it was just everyday stuff, like how much salt to put in the stew! I asked how her marriage was accepted. I figured it was about the bride’s family having one less mouth to feed—the girl lived and worked for the groom’s family. But apparently grandpa’s family was also poor, so they were happy to have her sent back!
Older Chinese relatives—they’ll be yakking away about practically nothing, then burst out laughing.
Cantonese is basically the language of yelling for dim sum.
A lot of Eastern European languages sound pretty rough.
RE: Fact #33 (Half-Life 2 Hacker Caught) – Early morning on May 7th, 2004, Axel Gembe woke up in Schönau im Schwarzwald, Germany, to find cops with guns all around his bed.
Seriously, why do people who screw over a company get treated like they’re public enemy number one?
Edit: Axel got really lucky the German police got him, not the US. Cops in the US would have totally crushed him.
RE: Fact #48 (Lottery Programmer’s $24M Scam) – Get in, get one win, clean up your mess, and get out.
Even with just one win, they should have looked into their lottery IT security guy sooner.
Unless someone cashed it in for him.
So, did you see that article? The guy was basically rigging the lottery, getting his friends to win and then getting the money back. His plan fell apart because his pal waited until the last minute – like, two hours before the deadline – to claim the prize. That really raised eyebrows.
One’s less sketchy than five, right? How many people would crack the code and stuff? Not a guarantee he’d get away with it, but still… five? Greedy much?
RE: Fact #38 (Literary Chinese Connected Three Nations) – The first European ship to hit Japan? They had a Chinese guy with them, and the local bigwig could talk to him – Chinese was everywhere back then. Apparently, the bigwig’s first message was something like, “Those guys with you are weird-looking.” The Chinese guy’s reply? “They’re rough around the edges, but they’ve got some awesome stuff.”
Seriously, some people still get so bothered by indoor shoes.
RE: Fact #26 (Last Execution in Tower of London) – And a German sausage… If he’d had some cheese too, it would have been perfect!
Scram.
Think he was a little ticked off when he got caught?
RE: Fact #15 (Kathleen Caronna ) – Glad to hear she and her family are okay, that’s the main thing. Unfortunately, Lidle and the other pilot didn’t make it.
RE: Fact #32 (Tongyangxi: China’s Arranged Child Brides) – The kids would grow up together. I bet that’d cause problems later on for the couple, because of the Westermarck effect—that thing where people aren’t attracted to people they grew up with like siblings before age six.
Yeah, totally get it. I went to a tiny school, same 50 kids from pre-K through 8th grade. A few came and went, but about 40 of us were together for a decade, from ages 4 to 14. High school was strange – some classmates got really hot, but dating them felt impossible. It was like having a crush on a brother or sister. I mean, I saw them do everything, from potty accidents to nose-picking. They’re great people, but… ew.
Lots of kids from the Catholic school in my town switched to the public high school because the public school had way more activities. Turns out, those kids were super popular right away—I’m just figuring that out now.
RE: Fact #10 (Bone Marrow Transplant Alters DNA) – Your blood type can change after a bone marrow transplant, depending on the donor’s.
RE: Fact #24 (Beethoven’s Deafness & Conversation Notebooks) – It’s neat how CDs hold about 74 minutes of music—that’s because the head of Sony wanted you to fit Beethoven’s 9th symphony on a single disc.
Ah, yeah, CDs.
Something had to set the bar.
That’s actually pretty good for advertising, too. Twelve records play about 25 minutes a side, so for classical music fans, that was a huge plus.
I remember thinking it was crazy how many tapes you could fit on a single CD, and you could even burn your own – though we all knew it was technically illegal unless you owned the original. The main rule was no making money off it. That’s what everyone said back then, anyway.
RE: Fact #29 (Blind People Struggle Recognizing Objects) – It’s the same for deaf and hard of hearing people, like myself. I got cochlear implants at 9 after losing all my hearing. Luckily, I got my hearing back easily because my brain was already used to sound.
But for people who’ve never heard before, getting a cochlear implant can be a bit much, even painful.
RE: Fact #19 (Toy Traffic Cone in Lung) – This 50-year-old guy said he swallowed Playmobil pieces as a kid. He remembers swallowing a toy cone from a set he got for his seventh birthday back in ’74. They operated, and guess what? It was that Playmobil cone, all tucked away in his lung lining. Four months later, his cough was almost gone, just a little lung irritation left. Usually, when a toy gets stuck in someone’s airways, they figure it out within a week, but sometimes kids don’t get diagnosed for much longer. It’s even rarer in adults – only three cases have been found after more than 20 years.
Just three cases slipped past everyone for over two decades. After 20 years, finding them is practically impossible, haha.
Lots of health issues are out there that you could go your whole life without ever realizing you have. This is way less common.
Just three cases got caught later.
I choked on food at almost every meal for over ten years. Doctors couldn’t figure it out. Then I threw up blood because my esophagus was torn. After they fixed that, I haven’t choked in three years. Something was seriously wrong, and now it’s fixed.
RE: Fact #19 (Toy Traffic Cone in Lung) – Talk about a weight off his shoulders! Going from “Your lung tumor’s out, but you’ve only got six months to a year, tops” to “You’re all good!”
The doctors were pretty upbeat about it: Even after the surgery, he still had some lung issues, but that’s not uncommon. The good news is, he felt much better, and he even found his missing Playmobil traffic cone!
Great news: you’re cancer-free! Bad news: this is going to be all over the news and websites like factrepublic.
RE: Fact #14 (Marlon Brando’s Estate Takeover) – It’s sadly pretty common, especially with older celebs and rich folks. Think Richard Simmons – loads of others have had their lives hijacked by strangers, cut off from family and friends.
RE: Fact #45 (Space Invaders’ $14 Billion Success) – Way back when, Japan had to make tons of extra coins because everyone was throwing them into arcade games to play.
RE: Fact #3 (Rommel’s Forced Suicide & Funeral) – His family would still get his pension.
And, you know, avoid concentration camps.
My high school teacher’s family’s probably thrilled he made that choice—turns out they’re related!
After the war, his son Manfred Rommel became mayor of Stuttgart and a hugely popular liberal. He later got Germany’s top civilian award near the end of his 22 years as mayor.
He was one of the nicest guys I knew, really humble and always stood up for what he believed in. He also wrote some really cute, funny poems – a bit silly, too. I miss hearing his take on things these days.
RE: Fact #29 (Blind People Struggle Recognizing Objects) – Yeah, I’ve heard that, and it totally makes sense. Their brains would be completely overloaded. Think about suddenly getting a new sense – like hearing radio waves or seeing magnetic fields. It’d be super confusing, you wouldn’t know what to ignore and what to pay attention to.
RE: Fact #9 (Warren Buffett’s Late Wealth Surge) – Buffett was almost a millionaire by 21, which is like having $250,000 to $300,000 now.
When Warren was fifteen, he raked in over $175 a month delivering newspapers—that’s crazy! Think about it: that’s like making $3000 a month as a kid delivering papers.
RE: Fact #4 (Japan’s ‘Evaporated People’ Phenomenon) – Dad just needed cigarettes and a gallon of milk.
RE: Fact #7 (Anna Cramling’s Chess Opening Loss) – Anna’s folks are both grandmasters, seriously amazing! Her mom, Pia, was even the world’s top female player for a bit back in the 80s. And her dad? They even named an opening after him!
I saw some YouTube videos of her mom playing chess in NYC—pretty wild stuff. One was hilarious; this guy was teaching her like she’d never played, super enthusiastic, and then he found out she’s a grandmaster and got totally schooled! Lots of the videos are clickbait, but those two were great.
He was stoked to get beat by a GM—turns out, he knew who she was! It’s not like you accidentally end up at Disney World; this is a memory-maker. He can’t play against awesome people every day, after all.
It’s hilarious watching her videos of her parents’ reactions to her bad chess moves! Her parents are tough, but they seem to get along pretty well.
Her mom watching her play is hilarious.
It’s hilarious and strangely sweet! Her parents are total rockstars, and she’s a great chess player, though not quite as good as them. She’s cleverly built a cool influencer career around her love of chess.
That’s awesome! She’s only the fifth woman ever to become a grandmaster in chess. What a feat!
I actually won two Fortnite matches in one week! So we’re pretty much equals.
So, Anna’s working from home.
RE: Fact #17 (Trust Fund Son Kills Father) – 2015 wasn’t that long ago… oh no… Oh geez… I really hope not.
That’s how I felt about 2005, haha
RE: Fact #6 (Teen Solves 1964 Murder Case) – For 57 years, little Marise Chiverella’s murder was one of Pennsylvania’s biggest unsolved mysteries. The state police—over 250 officers and 4,700 pages of files—never cracked the case. Using family history to track down the killer was a massive undertaking, like a huge puzzle. One investigator said the guy who helped them, Eric Schubert, was like a magic worker, constantly giving them new leads and names to check out. Schubert built around 50 family trees to find a link to Hazleton, eventually finding a guy who’d moved there from Italy in 1904—the killer’s grandfather. That led them to the killer’s family, but unfortunately, both main suspects were already dead. Luckily, they found a hairbrush belonging to one of the suspects’ wives, and DNA cleared him, leaving only James Forte. Schubert was really happy to finally bring some closure to the family.
RE: Fact #22 (Schwarzenegger’s Role in Hummer Creation) – H1 ran a stop sign and totaled my Integra. Nobody got hurt.
Integra owners seem to have all the bad luck. My buddy’s Integra GS got totaled – some SUV driver lost control on ice and slammed right into him. He lived right by a state highway, so it wasn’t a surprise.
Maybe American cars are just gigantic, on average.
RE: Fact #30 (Thomas Jefferson’s Stuffed Moose Shipment) – That’s not much, huh?
So, how much would it cost to ship a stuffed moose to France now?
Yeah, it’s way smaller than it would be now. And it really silenced those French guys who were bragging about their mammal size.
RE: Fact #13 (Flight Attendant Buys Hijack Fuel) – Flying in Canada, I had to cover about $3,000 for fuel because our plane’s credit card was useless. Luckily, they’d wired the money to my account by the time I got back to the US—and they goofed on the exchange rate, so I ended up a couple hundred bucks richer!
I landed at a tiny private airport and filled up three cargo helicopters. They had a deal going – buy this much fuel, get a $50 gift card. I ended up with $600 in gift cards! Then, we were told we weren’t supposed to take those deals, so we gave the cards to the crew to get rid of… at the bar that night.
I never knew planes carried credit cards! I figured airlines just got billed directly or something.
I had to shell out $500 because the company card crapped out. The office folks said I should just pay, so I asked for a 15% cut for using my own money, and they were cool with it.
RE: Fact #45 (Space Invaders’ $14 Billion Success) – That’s pretty cool how the old computer tech made the game slower with all those animated sprites. The enemies speeding up as you beat them wasn’t planned, it was just a side effect! It actually made the game more intense – kept things exciting even when there were fewer enemies left.
I was blown away by how they used colored cellophane strips on the screen – it made the invaders look like they were changing color as they fell! So clever and simple.
RE: Fact #4 (Japan’s ‘Evaporated People’ Phenomenon) – It works because Japan’s privacy laws are seriously strong.
RE: Fact #33 (Half-Life 2 Hacker Caught) – He basically spilled the beans by logging into their version control server. They had an account named ‘build’ with no password, and anyone on the internet could access it.
Is it closer to trespassing or breaking and entering?
All that black hat stuff, the jail time it could mean…and he just randomly found that awful place one night, haha.
Taking stuff while you’re not supposed to be there? That’s stealing.
RE: Fact #5 (Cherokee Syllabary and Literacy Boom) – Sequoyah didn’t start completely from nothing; he used an English Bible, borrowing some of its symbols. But the rest? Totally his work. Seeing that writing was possible gave him the push he needed to create a working syllabary.
Lots of writing systems probably showed up because writing itself spread around. It’s neat how Egypt started writing only a couple of centuries after the Fertile Crescent did.
Surprisingly few writing systems were invented from scratch. Most are copied or adapted from earlier ones. For example, the Latin alphabet’s history traces back through Etruscan, Euboaean, Phoenician, Proto-Sinaitic, and finally, Egyptian hieroglyphs.
RE: Fact #35 (Rasputin’s Daughter Became Lion Tamer) – She totally survived that bear attack because of her super strong genes.
RE: Fact #6 (Teen Solves 1964 Murder Case) – Little Marise Ann Chiverella. That’s her name. Headline writers really bug me – they focus on the awful stuff that happened to her, not on who she *was*. Marise was on her way to school, carrying cans for a food drive, when this happened. She was attacked, strangled, and left in a coal mine. We should remember *her*.
RE: Fact #23 (UAE Loans & Marriage Crisis) – The UAE doesn’t have bankruptcy laws like the US does. If you can’t pay your debts, you could end up in jail.
That’s probably why there are so many abandoned supercars – expats get one, can’t keep up with the payments, and just ditch it and leave the country to avoid jail time.
Could I make some money buying these up from banks cheaply and shipping them overseas?
RE: Fact #8 (Trees Communicate via Fungal Networks) – This really cool documentary, “What Plants Talk About,” shows how plants totally react, communicate, and even send help to each other—like, sharing nutrients and stuff. I loved it, but it’s become a pain to find. I had it downloaded, but my computer crapped out, and I can’t get my files off it—it’s locked up tight, and even a tech guy couldn’t crack it.
RE: Fact #9 (Warren Buffett’s Late Wealth Surge) – Getting that first billion is the toughest part.
RE: Fact #19 (Toy Traffic Cone in Lung) – If it got into his lung, wouldn’t he have breathed it in instead of swallowing it?
He probably choked a little, it went away, and he figured he’d swallowed it.
Seriously creepy stuff.
RE: Fact #13 (Flight Attendant Buys Hijack Fuel) – Honestly, that was a pretty clever way for the Algerian negotiators to keep the plane grounded.
Wow, thanks! That clears things up. I was really surprised a government wouldn’t try to calm things down in such a dangerous situation.
I read this crazy story ages ago about a convenience store robbery. The robbers stole cash, but also weirdly, a carton of smokes. The clerk, super observant, got a good look at them and remembered everything.
Think about it: before 9/11, plane hijackings were a lot more frequent and not nearly as serious. Hijackers usually just wanted cash, and you can’t spend it if you’re dead.
It would’ve been fine if they’d just said their card was declined. Instead, we wasted ages collecting cash, and then they only wanted Algerian dinars!
RE: Fact #37 (North Face Founder’s Fatal Kayaking) – I figured he’d died kayaking some crazy rapids, but nope, he froze to death on a calm lake.
The good news? He’d been using his money to buy up huge chunks of land in Patagonia to make national parks. Now there are four massive parks, tons of untouched wilderness, for everyone to enjoy later on.
Yvon’s still kicking.
Tompkins was the one who kicked the bucket, and he’d been giving away land. Chouinard’s his friend.
So, who’s the target?
I saw a really good documentary about this a couple years back, but I’ve forgotten the title.
RE: Fact #31 (‘That’s What She Said’ Origin) – That joke was old even back when Steve Carell was using it. It’s hilarious because of that; totally Michael Scott.
RE: Fact #39 (Mozart Outsold Beyoncé in 2016) – That 200-disc Mozart box set is a big commitment! The site says it’s got a bunch of unfinished pieces and stuff that might not even be his, but hey, they threw it all on a CD anyway.
RE: Fact #40 (Crazy Crab: Baseball’s Anti-Mascot) – I practically lived at Candlestick as a kid on weekends. That poor crab! I never understood all the hate. Still don’t, really. Then again, it’s the same bunch that would boo anyone trying to start the wave…
RE: Fact #36 (Ancient Greeks Didn’t Consider 1 a Number) – They’d have been furious.
RE: Fact #12 (Millionaire Game Show Fraud Scandal) – Real pros use remote-controlled vibrating butt plugs. Amateurs…
This is driving me crazy – where’s this from again? Is it *It’s Always Sunny*? I think I remember Danny DeVito during a chess scene.
It was a real-life accusation against chess grandmaster Hans Niemann.
This is brilliant, right? One vibrate for A, two for B…
I really hope it’s D.
RE: Fact #35 (Rasputin’s Daughter Became Lion Tamer) – She was alive when that “Rasputin” song came out in ’78. Someone on Twitter said, “Imagine hearing a song on the radio about your dad’s wild life!” I messed up the year, though – she actually died before the song was released.
The Wiki says she died in 1977.
Shoot, I thought it was 1979.
The song never came out in the USSR, but Boney M toured there in ’78, so lots of people probably heard it live.
RE: Fact #43 (Caesar’s Brutal Battle of Alesia) – The crazy thing is, Caesar built siege walls even though he was attacking, not defending! The Romans had a double-walled setup—an inner wall to trap the Gauls, and an outer one to stop any help from getting through.
Historia Civilis has a great explanation of the battle. He covers Caesar’s whole career, right up to his death and the power struggle that followed – definitely worth checking out.
The saddest part? Vercingetorix kicked out all the civilians—women and kids included—because they were starving. They pleaded with the Romans to take them as slaves, just to get food. Caesar refused, wouldn’t let them in. They ended up starving to death right there, in plain sight of both armies. Caesar wrote about it in his book, *The Gallic Wars*, but he doesn’t say what happened to them afterwards.
I’m a simple guy. See Historia Civilis? Upvote. We all cried when they killed the pink square.
A strong defense is the best offense.
RE: Fact #1 (Ted Danson’s Billboard Protest) – My dad volunteered at the Museum of Northern Arizona when he was older—he was a huge Edward Abbey fan. He actually met Ted Danson at a fundraiser in Flagstaff and heard this story straight from him! It was a real highlight for Dad in his later years, before he got sick. I’ve got a great picture of them laughing together that night—one of my favorites of him before things got tough.
Man, I lost my dad a couple years back, and it’s still hard to remember him before he got sick. It feels like our whole life together was this amazing picture, and then someone slapped a giant, ugly “CANCER” stamp right on it.
That photo’s really special. Definitely get a nice print and put it up somewhere.
RE: Fact #46 (Max Planck Ignored Physics Warning) – To be fair to the professor, almost nobody else could have figured out quantum theory, then or now.
Turns out, lots of scientific breakthroughs happen around the same time in different places. It’s like someone made a big discovery and the word spread fast—quantum theory, for example, might’ve had a different name, but the ideas were already floating around.
RE: Fact #30 (Thomas Jefferson’s Stuffed Moose Shipment) – Sounds reasonable—totally worth it.
Most folks don’t realize just how huge moose are. No way you could ship a full-grown moose to France for $1400 these days.
Shipping a giant stuffed moose to France? That’s gotta be way more than $1400 these days, I bet. I just can’t prove it though.
RE: Fact #8 (Trees Communicate via Fungal Networks) – She’s gotten a lot of criticism for her “woo-woo” science. Her research isn’t necessarily wrong, but she’s built this whole idea around Mother Nature being all interconnected and caring, and that’s not really supported by the science. Like, she helped James Cameron with the mother tree thing in Avatar – not exactly hard-core science.
A recent Nature paper really calls this out. Basically, there’s a bias in how this stuff is published and reported; people are pushing a narrative that fits what we *want* to believe about nature being all interconnected.
The truth is, evolution’s all about survival of the fittest. Organisms look out for themselves, compete, and try to spread their genes. Fungi might leak some nutrients because it helps them get sugars from trees. But trees? They’d rather their neighbors were dead. Lots of trees actually poison, or shade out, or otherwise kill their competition. That Nature paper even says there’s no evidence to back up the idea that trees send resources to their offspring through these networks. In fact, unsupported claims have doubled in the last 25 years, showing a clear bias towards positive results that’s muddying our understanding of these networks.
RE: Fact #4 (Japan’s ‘Evaporated People’ Phenomenon) – Man, I wish this was a thing in the US. I’ve helped out with this in a few tough situations, and I’d totally pay someone to do it quicker and better.
RE: Fact #16 (Can-Can Dance Once Scandalous) – Crotchless underwear? What’s the deal with that?
They weren’t fully closed. The underwear was made of two big pieces of fabric that weren’t sewn together down there. They overlapped a bit, covering things like regular underwear, but not snug like today’s. To pee, a woman would just spread her legs and maybe the fabric a little to get at her bits. Can-can dancing meant big leg kicks, which opened up the underwear, showing everything to the audience.
Apparently, cans started showing up around the 1820s. And women’s underwear back then? Open in the crotch, so they could, uh, go to the bathroom easier without taking everything off.
RE: Fact #12 (Millionaire Game Show Fraud Scandal) – It’s even dumber than you’d believe! For his plan to work, he had to say every answer. Like, imagine this: Ingram goes, “Definitely not C… wait, maybe C? Yeah, C it is!” Anyone who’s watched “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” would’ve spotted the fake-out; it’s ridiculously bad.
RE: Fact #26 (Last Execution in Tower of London) – What gear should our spies have?
Hmm, gotta include that suspiciously German sausage.
RE: Fact #44 (Portuguese Woman Disguised as Soldier) – Maria Úrsula d’Abreu e Lencastro, born in Rio in 1682, dreamt of crusades and joined the army as Baltasar do Couto Cardoso, fighting in India and the Moluccas. She became a fortress captain in India, fell for another captain, Afonso Teixeira Arrais de Melo, and got busted when she asked the king for permission to marry him. No problem! The king said yes, she left the army, but still got to wear her uniform when she was with Afonso.
She didn’t make captain; she was a corporal. Her husband later became governor of a fort in Goa, India. The Portuguese wikipedia page has more details – apparently, they both showed up at military events in uniform. And get this, I found out she served twelve years and eight months in the Portuguese military, making her the first woman! They think she was let go because they found out “Baltazar do Couto” was actually a woman, but her service was still recognized.
I called her captain. The source called her “cabo de baluarte,” and I wasn’t sure if that was just a corporal or a higher rank, so I stuck with the English Wikipedia version.
RE: Fact #49 (Eisenhower’s Stress Before D-Day) – He figured running for president would be a relaxing, easy gig to keep him occupied after retirement.
Admiral McCain, Senator McCain’s grandpa, died shortly after the war ended. War’s brutal, and it doesn’t always play out like in the films.
Ike’s resume is seriously impressive, with “Supreme Commander of Allied Forces” right next to “President of the United States.” He’s probably the only president who could honestly say being president was his *second* toughest gig.
Other presidents aged way faster while they were in office.
Ike strolled into the Oval Office looking pretty good.
RE: Fact #12 (Millionaire Game Show Fraud Scandal) – He probably should’ve taken the $750,000 and called it a day. Got a little too greedy, I guess.
After his win, he and his wife had a huge fight backstage. The plan was for him to leave quietly before things got too crazy, but he got caught up in all the excitement.
RE: Fact #17 (Trust Fund Son Kills Father) – I was a law student interning for a New York State Supreme Court judge. She often suggested we check out this trial when we weren’t busy with schoolwork, and we did.
The defense lawyer was awesome – I really thought his client might walk. He made a super strong case that his client had serious mental health problems. But, the prosecution was unbelievably good, the best I’ve ever seen. I get why the verdict was what it was, even though it could’ve gone either way.
It was a fascinating trial. For some reason, I still remember all that stuff about the family’s tennis club membership. That summer I also saw Paul Manafort’s first hearing and Cuba Gooding Jr.’s case, plus a few other really serious ones…but this trial was the most interesting because of the social class angle.
The article says he skipped most of his trial. Seriously? You can do that?! I had no idea you could refuse to be at your own murder trial.
How’d they decide on second-degree instead of first?
RE: Fact #16 (Can-Can Dance Once Scandalous) – The open-crotch underwear changes everything. I thought it was full coverage, like one of those “silly puritans” things we always laugh about. But if the dance shows the vulva, then there are very few places you could do it today without getting arrested.
RE: Fact #27 (Jim Carrey’s Sonic Movie Return) – He never actually asked for a golden script. When an interviewer asked about coming out of retirement, he joked he’d only do it if “angels delivered a gold script.” So, the Sonic team sent him *Sonic 3*’s script printed on 24k gold paper—a fun nod to his comment, because they really wanted him.
The Sonic movies are awesome. Jim Carrey is fantastic in all three. If you’re a 90s kid like me, you’ll love seeing Carrey back in his classic, over-the-top style. And if you loved Sonic growing up, it’s even better.
Seriously, Jim Carrey went all out—he totally nailed it, and it’s a blast to watch.
RE: Fact #36 (Ancient Greeks Didn’t Consider 1 a Number) – Dude, I ate two of my three figs. How many are left? Man, I’m clueless.