1 Marie Curie’s Scandal and Nobel
Marie Curie had an affair with a married physicist, and when their letters leaked, the public reacted with outrage. The Nobel Committee pressured her to skip her second Nobel Prize ceremony. However, Albert Einstein advised her to ignore the critics, so she attended and claimed her prize.
2. When Stalin lay dying, his doctor remained unavailable because the secret police were torturing him. Paralyzed and unable to speak, Stalin went untreated for 12 hours while his terrified subordinates hesitated to call a doctor, fearing he might recover and punish them for acting without orders.
3. The evangelical belief in the Rapture-the idea that Christians will physically ascend to meet Jesus in the sky-only dates back to the 1830s.
4. Gorillas constantly pass gas (fart) due to their highly fibrous diet.
5. In 2022, during a Thanksgiving cruise to Mexico, a man named James Michael Grimes won a free drink in an air-guitar competition. That became his last memory before waking up overboard in the Gulf of Mexico with no ship in sight. He tread water for 18 hours, enduring stings from two swarms of jellyfish on his legs and arms before finally being rescued.
6 DuPont Cancer Report Hidden
American toxicologist Robert Kehoe discovered reports linking the chemical benzidine to bladder cancer. However, since his client, DuPont, manufactured benzidine, he hid the report in a box instead of alerting the public. Decades later, as DuPont employees suffering from cancer filed lawsuits, investigators unearthed the moldy records.
7. While testifying in 2019 to stop paparazzi from endangering her children, actress Jennifer Garner described a “solid decade” when at least five or six cars-and up to 15 or 20 on weekends-were constantly stationed outside her house.
8. Dmitri Mendeleev, credited with creating the Periodic Table of Elements, received nine Nobel Prize nominations in Chemistry but never won. Each time, the 1903 winner, Svante Arrhenius, blocked his award due to a long-standing grudge over Mendeleev’s criticism of his research.
9. An early Irish legal text permitted pregnant women to steal small amounts of food if they had cravings for it.
10. When scientist Dan Shechtman discovered quasiperiodic crystals in 1982, the scientific community mocked and shamed him. Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling even dismissed his findings, stating, “There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.” However, in 2011, Shechtman won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery.
11 Tom Arnold’s Sister’s Drug Empire
Actor Tom Arnold’s sister Lori married a 23-year-old man at just 14, with her mother’s permission. She later went on to run one of the largest meth operations in the Midwest until her arrest in 1989.
12. The Netherlands consumes an estimated 750,000 chocolate sprinkle and butter sandwiches, known as Hagelslag, every day.
13. In 2005, three lions rescued a 12-year-old girl in Ethiopia who had been kidnapped by men attempting to force her into marriage. The lions chased off her abductors and guarded her until Ethiopian police arrived to rescue her.
14. Gavrilo Princip, the student who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, believed he wasn’t responsible for starting World War I. He claimed the war would have happened regardless of the assassination and stated, “I cannot feel myself responsible for the catastrophe.”
15. Ahn Jung-hwan, the South Korean footballer who scored the winning goal against Italy in the 2002 World Cup, faced unexpected consequences. At the time, he played for an Italian team, but after his victory, the team’s owner terminated his contract, citing the goal as the reason.
16 Coldplay’s Consistent Band Lineup
Coldplay has maintained the same lineup since its inception nearly 30 years ago (as of March 2025). The band has never used touring musicians, with the original four members continuing to play and tour together.
17. During the American Revolution, George Washington ordered smallpox inoculations for all his troops, declaring, “We have more to dread from it than from the sword of the enemy.”
18. In the United States, millions of people sell their blood plasma for income. Donation stations have crafted business models designed to encourage frequent returns from these “donors.”
19. Vincent van Gogh left art school after an incident where he was assigned to draw the Venus de Milo but instead chose to sketch the nude torso of a peasant woman. When confronted by his teacher, Van Gogh argued that a woman must have “hips, buttocks,” and “a pelvis in which she can carry a baby.”
20. Despite 28 deaths since 1985, the Lodi Parachute Center, a skydiving center in California, remains open and continues to operate.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Murderer’s Fatal Gas Trap
In 1977, triple murderer Melvin Chelcie Carr accidentally asphyxiated himself while attempting to gas his three victims to death. His wife later returned home to find all of them dead in the garage.
22. Over the past decade, some obese patients were sent to zoos for MRI and CT scans because standard hospital machines couldn’t accommodate their weight. Zoos, equipped with larger scanners designed for big animals, provided a practical solution in these cases.
23. When the small town of Delton, Michigan, welcomed an Austrian exchange student, the host family thought the boy had exaggerated his size. However, Bernhard Raimann stood 6’6″ tall and wanted to play American football. He went on to dominate local teams, earned a college scholarship, and eventually made it to the NFL.
24. During Saturday Night Live’s first season, the show was simply called Saturday Night because another program already used the Saturday Night Live name. That’s why each episode still opens with the iconic line, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
25. A 2023 study analyzed the cognitive ability scores of nearly 400,000 Americans from 2006 to 2018. Over that 13-year period, researchers found that Americans’ IQ scores had declined in three out of the four cognitive domains included in the analysis.
RE: Fact #2 (Stalin’s Death and Delay) – His staff put off helping him because he’d told them not to bother him the night before, and they were scared of his reaction if he found out they hadn’t gotten him help sooner. Working for that guy was a nightmare.
RE: Fact #2 (Stalin’s Death and Delay) – Oleg Khlevniuk really nailed it. Stalin built a system where he was the ultimate boss, always checking up on everything his people did. The funny thing is, when Stalin was on his deathbed, his followers were totally lost—they couldn’t decide anything without him.
RE: Fact #25 (American IQ Decline Study) – Verbal reasoning, matrix reasoning, and number sequencing all went down.
Smartphones have autocorrect and calculators built-in.
So it figures those skills aren’t as sharp as they used to be, since we don’t really need them as much anymore.
Spatial reasoning actually got better, which is weird.
RE: Fact #29 (Egypt’s Mysterious Set Animal) – I dig the way Tutenstein looks. He’s like some weird, creepy monster, but with that ancient Egyptian vibe.
RE: Fact #18 (Selling Blood Plasma for Income) – I did that for ages – twice a week, fifteen bucks the first time, twenty-five the second. They get you coming back with that bigger payment. I’ve still got a scar from the huge needle. It helped me out when I was strapped for cash.
RE: Fact #48 (Declining Human Body Temperature) – I think I read somewhere that people’s average body temperature drops as they get older. So, if people are living longer, the average temperature would go down.
RE: Fact #15 (South Korean Footballer’s Backlash) – Perugia went belly up in 2005, and Gaucci ran off to the Dominican Republic to dodge questions. He laid low for four years before getting a three-year suspended sentence. He passed away in 2020. Ahn’s a TV star in Korea and a Save the Children ambassador.
He was on that 2020 K-variety show, Restaurant on Wheels, and I totally loved him in it! Ahn was hilarious and so nice to everyone else—a total goofy big brother, haha.
RE: Fact #19 (Van Gogh’s Art School Exit) – The story gets even funnier: Van Gogh had to draw the Venus de Milo in class, but instead drew a naked, legless Flemish peasant woman. His teacher, Siberdt, didn’t like it and rubbed out Van Gogh’s drawing so hard he ripped the paper! Van Gogh went nuts and yelled, “You don’t know anything about women! Women have hips, butts, and a pelvis to carry a baby!”
RE: Fact #4 (Gorillas’ Constant Gas Problem) – So, I just found out some crazy stuff: fish are always peeing, birds don’t fart, but gorillas? They fart all the time!
RE: Fact #2 (Stalin’s Death and Delay) – The Death of Stalin movie really nails this whole thing – it’s awesome if you haven’t seen it.
RE: Fact #47 (Cuckold’s Horns Photo Prank) – Wait, those aren’t bunny ears? My whole life’s been a lie!
RE: Fact #47 (Cuckold’s Horns Photo Prank) – In Spanish, they say someone’s “putting horns” on you if they’re cheating.
RE: Fact #6 (DuPont Cancer Report Hidden) – That’s terrible.
RE: Fact #34 (Paul Bettany’s Sudden Proposal) – That headline forgets to mention they also worked on *A Beautiful Mind* that year.
RE: Fact #33 (Sheitel: Jewish Wig Tradition) – Don’t try to learn about Judaism from Wikipedia. For years, people with a bias have been sneaking antisemitic stuff into articles about Israel, Jewish people, and Judaism.
For example, this article totally ignores the fact that married women’s head coverings were started by rabbis, not God. Anyone talking about loopholes and what God wanted is starting from the wrong place.