1 Harrison Ford’s Yellowstone Rescue
In 2001, a 13-year-old Boy Scout named Cody Clawson went missing in Yellowstone Park for over 18 hours. He used his belt buckle to reflect sunlight and signal passing planes. Harrison Ford, who was flying his helicopter, spotted his signal, landed, and rescued him.
2. Before the Reagan era, people called trickle-down economics the “Horse and Sparrow Theory.” The idea was that if you fed a horse plenty of oats, sparrows would get to pick them out of its poop.
3. Many competitive Scrabble players quit after the game banned hundreds of “offensive” words, including racial slurs and insults related to gender and sexuality.
4. When someone important to you abruptly leaves, your brain responds in a way similar to physical pain.
5. While voice actor Tara Strong was recording crying sounds for her character Dill Pickles on Rugrats, her performance was so realistic that it made a woman in the studio lactate. The producers had to stop the session.
6 $25M Stolen via Deepfake
In 2024, scammers used a deepfake video conference to trick a finance worker into transferring $25 million. The worker believed he was speaking with multiple colleagues and the company’s CFO, but all of them were fake.
7. Boxing legend Evander Holyfield lost nearly all of the estimated $200 million he earned during his career due to reckless spending, bad business deals, and poor financial advice. By 2019, he was earning up to $106,000 per month from personal appearances but remained “basically broke.”
8. After watching the 2019 adaptation of his musical Cats, Andrew Lloyd Webber felt so emotionally damaged that he bought himself a dog.
9. In 1863, Union General Joseph Hooker significantly boosted troop morale by improving soldiers’ diets and hygiene. He issued soft bread four times a week, fresh onions or potatoes twice a week, and dried vegetables once a week. He also required soldiers to bathe twice a week and air out their bedding.
10. The FBI banned solo interviews with serial killers after convict Edmund Kemper told agent Robert Ressler that he could kill him long before help arrived.
11 Cop’s Death Leads to Lawsuit
In 2012, the widow of an Atlanta cop won a $3 million malpractice lawsuit after her husband died during a threesome with a friend and another woman. The jury found that his doctor was negligent in misdiagnosing his heart condition and failing to warn him to avoid physical activity until further tests were completed.
12. In 2015, Thomson Reuters experienced a massive “reply all” email storm when an employee in the Philippines accidentally sent a phone reactivation request to over 33,000 coworkers. Seven hours later, the original email had triggered nearly 23 million emails.
13. We only know about MKUltra experiments because officials misfiled 20,000 pages of records.
14. Vin Diesel’s real name is Mark Sinclair.
15. Goalkeeper Tommaso Berni spent six years under contract with Inter Milan, reportedly earning around €200,000 a year. Although he never made a single appearance for the club, he managed to receive two red cards-one for sarcastically applauding the referee and another for dissent.
16 Excel Art by Tatsuo Horiuchi
Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi paints using Microsoft Excel. He prefers spreadsheets over traditional canvases or drawing software because they offer “more functions and are easier to use.”
17. Although her 27-year-old son died from cancer in 2020, Spanish TV actress Ana Obregón fulfilled her dream of becoming a grandmother by using his frozen sperm. His daughter was born in 2023.
18. Many soldiers in World War II used and abused hard drugs. Japanese, American, and British forces consumed large amounts of amphetamines, but German troops pioneered battlefield pill-popping during the early phases of the war.
19. Yale psychologists compared Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood to Sesame Street and found that children who watched Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood remembered more of the storylines and demonstrated a significantly higher “tolerance of delay,” meaning they were more patient.
20. Naturally, one out of every 6,400 hydrogen atoms in water is a deuterium atom. It forms a “heavy water” molecule with a slightly sweet taste and is safe in small amounts. However, replacing more than 50% of the body’s H?O with D?O would be fatal.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Honda Fit 2025 Pricing
Honda sells the 2025 Fit in Japan, starting at ¥1,592,000, which is approximately $10,747 in U.S. dollars (as of March 2025).
22. During the Irish Famine, a phenomenon called Souperism emerged. Schools provided food to starving children on the condition that they receive Protestant religious instruction. However, those who “took the soup” faced scorn from their peers, and the stigma lasted beyond the famine.
23. When Quentin Tarantino learned that Video Archives, the video rental store where he had worked in Hermosa Beach, California, was closing, he bought the entire inventory and recreated the store in his basement. For him, “that place was a lifesaver.”
24. In 1942, the U.S. military printed and distributed currency with the word “HAWAII” stamped over it. This precaution ensured that if Japan invaded the islands, the money would become obsolete and wouldn’t affect the mainland economy.
25. Pandas are only fertile once a year, and their fertility window lasts just 36 hours!
RE: Fact #24 (WWII Hawaii Emergency Currency) – I found a super rare version of these at my regular coin shop. Apparently, some guys on the USS Missouri ran a bunch of Hawaii bills through the ship’s post office machine the day Japan surrendered. That means there aren’t many of these bills around with the ship and surrender date stamped on them.
RE: Fact #23 (Tarantino Saves Video Archives) – I hoped he’d buy the place and make it a museum right there.
RE: Fact #14 (Vin Diesel’s Real Name) – Funny, right? Even with a name like Vin Diesel, I never once doubted it was real!
RE: Fact #9 (General Hooker’s Troop Reforms) – Crazy how just bread and dried veggies were considered a big upgrade.
RE: Fact #39 (Dionne Quintuplets’ Exploitation) – Then came IVF and the Octomom.
That’s hilarious! I saw an ad for her interview yesterday. Crazy that those girls were naturally conceived back in the 1930s!
I’m curious what the record for natural childbirth is these days. It seems like anything beyond twins usually involves fertility treatments.
RE: Fact #21 (Honda Fit 2025 Pricing) – I discovered a Honda Fit hybrid in Jamaica that gets amazing gas mileage—over 40 MPG!
Meh, not that great, huh? My old Honda Fit got 40 MPG on the highway.
Yeah, but a hybrid gets 40 mpg in the city, too.
My Ford Escape, a regular-sized diesel SUV with a stick shift, got an amazing 53 miles to the gallon in France! No fancy turbo or hybrid stuff, just a standard diesel engine. I even switched the dashboard to miles, not kilometers, and checked the gas mileage myself— I drove almost 800 miles on one tank! My wife’s car back home, about the same size and power, only gets half that— around 26 mpg in town and 32 on the highway. It’s crazy how much worse the fuel economy is here. Seems like someone’s keeping our cars inefficient.
My 2016 Honda Fit in Japan—not even a hybrid—gets almost 50 miles to the gallon.
RE: Fact #4 (Heartbreak Feels Like Pain) – Long-term relationships leave a huge imprint on your brain. It takes a ton of rewiring to adjust after a loss. That totally explains why I still feel like my brain’s rebuilding itself years after losing someone important. That article is fascinating.
For someone who’s died, you hold onto the good memories. Those stay good, and when you’re reminded of them, it helps you keep going. You take what time you have. That’s just how it is. They were loved, and they loved you back.
But with an ex who cheated? Every time I think about them, it’s like getting stabbed all over again. All the good memories are ruined because you realize how naive you were, thinking they cared as much as you did. You weren’t loved, you were betrayed and dumped. You’re not alone because things are out of your control; you’re alone because the person you cared about most chose someone else.
My grandma on my dad’s side passed away years ago. She was old, it was her time, and it was sad, but not a big tragedy. Then, about two years later, my aunt and cousins invited me to Thanksgiving, and I was so happy to see her again—until I remembered she’s buried in my dad’s yard.
I get that. My mom passed away fifteen years ago, and sometimes I still think, “I should call Mom and tell her about this!” It’s less frequent now, but it still pops up.
RE: Fact #25 (Pandas’ Short Fertility Window) – Pandas are endangered, it’s our fault. They were doing great until we messed up their homes and made it hard for them to mix their genes. And hey, lots of other plants and animals are getting help because of panda conservation too. I work at the Panda Base in Chengdu.
Guess what? Two pandas at some Chinese zoo—I can’t remember which one—wouldn’t mate for ages. Then COVID hit, the zoo shut down, and bam! They were all over each other within a week. Hilarious!
Haha, seriously! People blaming the panda for wanting to die out is just too funny.
Nah, it’s us. Always us.
RE: Fact #32 (Cosmic Ray Alters Election Vote) – A single-event upset (or SEU, also called a single-event error) happens when a single charged particle hits a sensitive part of a microchip—like in a processor, memory, or transistor. This creates a charge that changes the chip’s state, causing a glitch or a “soft error.” You can find examples of notable SEUs, including those from the Belgium elections, on Wikipedia.
Stuff gets messed up when reading data—it happens a lot. Using checksums helps make sure everything’s correct. There’s a cool video on YouTube from Three Blue One Brown explaining them. Old tech like tapes and disks were terrible at saving data perfectly. Checksums check the data to make sure the computer read it right; they can even fix tiny mistakes.
Checksums are only worth it if you’ve got a lot of errors. They cost extra memory and computing power because you have to calculate and then check them. And then there’s the recovery issue – some checksums fix a couple of bits, others just say “oops, something’s wrong.” Electrical engineers know all about them and use them when needed.
RE: Fact #43 (Singapore’s Massive Reserves) – Singapore’s leadership seems pretty good.
A zero-tolerance approach to corruption really helps things.
A minister got busted, convicted, and tossed in jail for being corrupt. The bribes were peanuts compared to what happens in other places. It’s even funnier considering how much he makes – seriously dumb to throw that away for bribes that weren’t even a third of his yearly salary! We take public service integrity seriously.
RE: Fact #33 (Nimoy’s Vulcan Salute Origin) – Picture yourself in that synagogue, not having a clue some kid in the back was memorizing a hand gesture that would later be super famous.
RE: Fact #27 (Snowboarders Once Banned) – High school history report: Resorts wouldn’t let snowboarders in, saying snowboards weren’t “approved equipment”.
It makes sense, liability-wise. Skiers had all this checked-out gear, professionally tuned, especially the bindings that were designed to release in an accident. Then these guys show up with these giant, un-releasing boards, and management freaked out. Doesn’t excuse how the skiers treated them, but from a risk perspective, it was crazy for the resorts – total chaos, no one knew how to handle it.
RE: Fact #34 (Gropecu*t Lane’s Name Change) – That level of detail would make a period drama or fantasy show look like a joke—a really edgy, gritty, and explicit joke trying too hard to be Game of Thrones.
A really nasty Tiffany problem.
Using Tiffany as a name in a medieval story seems okay, since Pterry sort of suggested it as a street name, but his work was usually pretty tame.
It totally reminds me of Terry Pratchett. Remember in Discworld how they renamed “The Whore Pits” to “Road of Negotiable Affection” after the Seamstresses kicked up a fuss?
Terry Pratchett, the man.
RE: Fact #37 (Heimweh: Swiss Homesickness) – It’s awesome that they thought only Swiss people could get this for 200 years.
Some people thought it was contagious, spread by sad songs. They figured the Swiss were more likely to get it because the mountains and the cowbells had messed with their heads.
Yeah, yeah, wait, what? That pretty much sums up a lot of pre-1850s medical knowledge. It’s based on observation, so some of it’s right…but the theory’s totally bonkers, so the conclusion’s wrong.
RE: Fact #32 (Cosmic Ray Alters Election Vote) – He totally should’ve won! Even God was on his side!
RE: Fact #34 (Gropecu*t Lane’s Name Change) – Medieval streets were often named for what went on there—like Butcher’s Row, Silver Street, or Fish Street. Prostitution was pretty common in medieval cities; one old London book mentions Love Lane as a place for “ladies of the night”. Then there’s Gropecunt Lane—pretty self-explanatory! Bristol also had Hoorstrete. But Fucking Grove in Bristol was out in the sticks, so maybe sex there was more for fun than business.
RE: Fact #26 (Florence Nightingale’s Hammer Name) – She was really good at keeping track of things. So, when she got sick and was stuck in bed, she crunched the numbers and showed how clean hospitals and proper wound care saved lives.
I saw a documentary about statistics that really got me thinking about this. It wasn’t just the number-crunching; it was how she turned all those boring tables into awesome, easy-to-understand charts. That made the science stuff actually matter to everyday people and politicians, which was huge for social change.
RE: Fact #4 (Heartbreak Feels Like Pain) – Losing someone you love is rough. It can take ages to get over the feeling that they’re just around the corner.
Turns out, the part of your brain that remembers people is also the part that remembers where things are. When someone close to you is gone, it takes a while for your brain to adjust to that new reality. It can feel like your brain is actually broken, making it hard to think clearly.
So, be nice to people who’ve lost someone. It takes way longer to heal than most people realize.
Just be nice to everyone, really. You never know what’s going on in their lives.
“The Grieving Brain” is a great book that explains all this in more detail, if you’re interested.
RE: Fact #33 (Nimoy’s Vulcan Salute Origin) – My JCC teachers used this sign to call us in from the playground when we were kids.
RE: Fact #50 (1950s Law Silenced Jesus) – Turns out, Ben-Hur’s not actually named Ben.
RE: Fact #48 (Sumerians’ Base-60 Legacy) – So, they got to 60 because of how they counted on their fingers. They’d use their left hand, say, and count each finger section with their thumb – that’s three sections per finger, times four fingers, twelve total. After hitting twelve, they’d use a finger on their right hand to keep track, and start counting again on the left. Once they’d used all five fingers on the right, that made sixty, which became their main number.
That’s pretty smart! Like a human calculator.
That’s exactly what I was thinking! It’s all down to the number 12, because of how we count finger segments with our palms open.
RE: Fact #49 (Hamlet in Grand Theft Auto) – Saw this movie recently, and it’s pretty good! The pandemic’s impact is definitely felt in the dialogue—you can tell they were struggling. They didn’t seem to know much about online gaming, which is a shame, because this could’ve been huge if a big streamer or Discord server had promoted it. It’s a bit rough around the edges, made by a bunch of misfits, but there are some really sweet and funny parts.
Just saw it! Man, if they’d gotten some gamers and streamers involved, it could have been huge. Still a pretty awesome movie though! I bet someone else will try a whole movie in a game someday. Hoping for GTA 6, maybe?
RE: Fact #6 ($25M Stolen via Deepfake) – Cheap webcams and video conferencing software squeezing the image make this totally possible.
Totally, especially if it’s a remote company. Working in IT, I’m always running into people who are still pretty new to computers.
This is way more new than I’m letting on. If you hear me say “Let’s hop on Teams” or “Let’s open Quick Assist,” it’s because I’m losing it—you’re not picking the blue folder when it’s the only other option besides the red one!
Fake videos are easy to make, I get that. But a $25 million transaction? Every place I’ve worked, you need at least two signatures for anything like that. For that kind of money, it’d be a whole bunch of people, and the banks would be involved too.
Okay, I read the article. It’s pretty vague. It doesn’t actually say $25 million was *paid*, just that someone was tricked into trying to pay it. I bet it got flagged during approvals; they just didn’t say so in the article.
RE: Fact #12 (Thomson Reuters’ Email Disaster) – I get a kick out of that and usually make things worse by telling people to knock it off.
RE: Fact #16 (Excel Art by Tatsuo Horiuchi) – I helped a business owner who designs aviation fuel systems—he’s been doing it for over 30 years, makes a ton of money, and uses chair PNGs in Excel instead of actual valve diagrams.
RE: Fact #22 (Irish Famine’s Souperism Controversy) – Reverend Edward Nangle, who started the Achill Mission Colony back in the 1830s, is a good example of souperism. During the Famine, he fed the kids in the Colony’s schools, which made them really popular. People accused him of “buying souls” because of this. But souperism wasn’t always so straightforward; lots of non-Catholics gave food without pushing religion. Many Anglicans, even the Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Whately, spoke out against it. Plenty of Anglican soup kitchens didn’t try to convert anyone, and Quakers, who just focused on charity, were never involved.
Quakers always seem to be on the right side of history, don’t they? Like during WWII, they really went out of their way to help Japanese Americans in those internment camps – bringing food, finding them jobs, helping them get settled. I really respect them.
They were the first to fight against slavery in the US, even petitioning Congress to end it way back in 1790. I know some Quakers—really great people, and they don’t even try to convert me, even though I’m an atheist. I really respect them.
Quakers and Sikhs: Same goal, feed people, no sermons.
RE: Fact #30 (Laser Sights and The Terminator) – Lasers weren’t really around until the early 2000s, so that “took off” claim is a bit much.
So, if they were brand new in ’79, they were probably pretty pricey. If they became popular five years later, that might not have anything to do with a movie; maybe they just got cheaper.
RE: Fact #27 (Snowboarders Once Banned) – Snowboarding’s image is outdated, but honestly, my inner skier still gets annoyed by some snowboarders’ habits. Those lift-line backups they cause can be a real pain.
So, that, and people just plopping down in the middle of the run right before a drop. I’m still ticked at this guy who, while I was waiting for my wife, ran right into me, snapped my pole, blamed *me*, and then skedaddled.
I mostly skied, but tried snowboarding a couple of times. The place I went, though, had tons of snowboarders who’d stop halfway down the hill and just… hang out. I have no idea why.
RE: Fact #30 (Laser Sights and The Terminator) – Man, laser sights just highlight how shaky my hands get. Gotta eat something before heading to the range.
RE: Fact #10 (FBI Ends Solo Interviews) – That’s just terrible policy for any criminal interview.
That’s terrible policy for any interview, really. Best to have another person there, especially if it’s private.
Bad interview strategy, generally.
Yeah, I’ve never gotten a job by telling the interviewer how fast I could take them down.
It’s weird, I always follow up by talking about my soft skills instead.
FBI interviews are seriously messed up, especially since they don’t even record them.
I’ve been interviewed by the police twice. Once when I was thirteen, after a run-in with a cop. Then again at nineteen, for other reasons. They’re real jerks, not as smart as everyone thinks. It’s just like being questioned at your local police station—they’re still just cops. You can outsmart them; just keep your mouth shut.
Now, stay away from postal inspectors, tax agents, and U.S. Marshals. You can’t outsmart the first two—they’ll get you to incriminate yourself. And you can’t outrun the third; by the time they show up, someone else has already built the case against you, they’re just there to make the arrest.
RE: Fact #2 (Trickle-Down’s Horse and Sparrow) – They figured giving all the money to the rich would help the poor, but Hoover didn’t get it. Money goes up, not down. Give it to the poor, and the rich will have it soon enough. At least the poor would get to touch it first – Will Rogers
RE: Fact #22 (Irish Famine’s Souperism Controversy) – Lots of stories got really blown out of proportion over time, but some were actually true. Irish academics say it wasn’t common, and writers made the term famous after the famine.
The Wikipedia article even says so.
Lots of people only read the headline.
RE: Fact #9 (General Hooker’s Troop Reforms) – It’s a fact: prostitutes help keep soldiers’ spirits up.
So, this general really liked prostitutes, and they were always near his tents. People would ask who they were, and the answer was, “They’re Hooker’s,” and that’s how the word came about.
It’s not a real story, and his name wasn’t where the term came from. He was a real party animal, though.
RE: Fact #39 (Dionne Quintuplets’ Exploitation) – The Dionne quintuplets were a huge deal. Like, there’s even a quick joke about them in the movie *My Man Godfrey*. Someone says, “I didn’t know Godfrey had five kids!” and the other person replies, “If a woman in Canada can have five, why can’t Godfrey?”
RE: Fact #12 (Thomson Reuters’ Email Disaster) – Working for a huge company, I get a kick out of this yearly email disaster. It’s always someone accidentally sending a massive group email that explodes into a crazy reply-all chain with everyone getting angrier and angrier.
I work at a mid-sized company and totally bombed when I accidentally hit reply all to our local office—about 200 people. A couple others replied, a few coworkers teased me, and that was it. It’s easy to do, right? BCC is the way to go.
My grad school internship was nuts – every time someone got a promotion, landed a client, or even just started, there’d be a massive email chain of congrats. Reply All was the only option, and it drove me crazy! I ended up muting my inbox most days. My next job was way better; they used Slack, so you could just post your good news in a thread, react with an emoji, or ignore it completely.
RE: Fact #40 (Smooth Brain Is a Disorder) – Lissencephaly is really, really brutal. Most kids don’t live past 9 or 10, and even then, they don’t have much brain activity.
A friend’s daughter has lissencephaly; she just turned fourteen. She’s about like a six-month-old, developmentally. She used to have awful seizures every day, but new meds have really helped.
Man, I really wish mercy killing was legal. That’s a terrible situation for everyone involved.
RE: Fact #11 (Cop’s Death Leads to Lawsuit) – She got $3 million, and he got nothing?
He got a good send-off, and she got what she deserved. Sounds like a good deal all around.
Usually, malpractice insurance only pays out the first million. So the cardiologist is on the hook for the other two million. That’s totally unfair, especially since the article says he’s got a history of ignoring other doctors.
RE: Fact #48 (Sumerians’ Base-60 Legacy) – Base 60 is awesome because it’s divisible by tons of numbers! Think 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and even combinations like 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60. Base 10 only works with 1, 2, 5, and 10.
So, why’s a foot 12 inches long?
RE: Fact #21 (Honda Fit 2025 Pricing) – Honda Fits are really popular in Thailand. Bummer that all these big trucks are becoming a thing here. Driving small cars was already tough, and now with these massive SUVs and Raptors everywhere, it’s even worse.
The Nissan Versa Note is about the same size, but I think it has a slightly bigger trunk.
I should add, I’m a huge Honda Fit fan – I wanted one, but snagged a great deal on the Note instead. They’re both good cars in that same category.
RE: Fact #33 (Nimoy’s Vulcan Salute Origin) – I figured it was just a V for Vulcan.
Yeah, that’s right. Those folks at the orthodox synagogue, they really loved Star Trek.
RE: Fact #36 (Lobsters Pee to Communicate) – Cool, we’re pretty alike!
Good thing they don’t have to pay.
RE: Fact #7 (Holyfield’s Fortune Lost) – I feel sorry for him, but man, $106,000 a month broke? I wish that were my problem.
For super-rich people, it’s usually not like that. He might’ve been worth $200 million, but bad deals and loans could’ve wiped out $250 million – just an example. So, even after losing the $200 million, he could still owe $50 million. Making $1.2 million a year sounds amazing to us, but if you owe $50 million, you’re flat broke. Most of that $1.2 million probably wouldn’t even be yours anyway, thanks to court orders.
It’s like how a lot of us live beyond our means with loans and credit cards, but with that kind of money, things get totally insane.
I wish I could afford to be broke and make $106,000 a month.
No way, I’m in personal finance, and dropping 200 million is just crazy. With that much cash, you could live like you make five million a year for the rest of your life – you wouldn’t even need a super-great financial advisor to pull that off.
A five million dollar yearly salary is “private chef and a new sports car every month” kind of money.
Man, I wish I made 106k a year and still felt broke.
RE: Fact #32 (Cosmic Ray Alters Election Vote) – That’s why we have ECC memory.
ECC memory’s useless if a flip happens inside a register or the ALU. Caches usually have ECC.
RE: Fact #12 (Thomson Reuters’ Email Disaster) – So, this happened back in 2001 when I was at Kodak. We had a new bigwig, and someone thought it’d be a great idea to send their picture to everyone worldwide. Except, this person didn’t get the picture size thing, and sent a massive 16MB picture to every single Kodak employee.
Sixteen megs was huge back then, especially sending it to everyone, even those on dial-up. It crashed our email for three whole days!
Turns out, whoever did it used one of those tools that shrinks the picture *on screen*, but the full-sized picture was still attached to the email. They totally goofed on resizing it.
Seriously? Kodak in 2001 didn’t get that digital photos were a big deal?
Pretty insightful, huh?
RE: Fact #49 (Hamlet in Grand Theft Auto) – It’s a wild documentary, filmed entirely in the game. Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane wrote and directed it.
RE: Fact #20 (Deuterium in Water Explained) – That molecule is seriously thick.
RE: Fact #44 (Enzo Ferrari’s Reclusive Life) – He used purple ink and lived at his factory in Maranello.
His house got turned into a factory, but you can still see his old place – it’s pretty basic. He lived a simple life, from what I could tell.
RE: Fact #34 (Gropecu*t Lane’s Name Change) – That’s a bad name; they’ll need to change it again soon when Gen Z figures out what it really means.
RE: Fact #16 (Excel Art by Tatsuo Horiuchi) – I thought he’d colored the cells, but actually, he used the graphing tools.
Wow, I didn’t see that coming! This picture from the article really shows how crazy it is. I never would have tried something like that.
MF er
People really mess with Excel in creative ways, more than any other program out there.
Back in 2010, this awesome stick figure shooter Excel file was circulating around my office. It was so much fun! I think you moved with the arrow keys and shot with the space bar.
Yeah, Kelly Rowland texts people with it.
RE: Fact #46 (Mysterious English Sweating Sickness) – Most people think it was probably some weird hantavirus nobody’s ever seen before. If that’s right, it might have wiped itself out by being too deadly. Diseases that kill their hosts too quickly often die out because they can’t spread. Some COVID versions are less deadly than the original for this very reason—people live longer to spread it.
RE: Fact #2 (Trickle-Down’s Horse and Sparrow) – I get why they put so much work into rebranding that “eat our sh*t” economic idea.
It still feels like we’re getting the short end of the stick, so I guess the main idea’s still there.
RE: Fact #46 (Mysterious English Sweating Sickness) – Henry VII’s oldest son, Arthur, the Prince of Wales, kicked the bucket from the sweating sickness. He’d married Catherine of Aragon when they were both really young, and went to live in Wales with her. Six months later, they both got sick. Catherine lived, Arthur didn’t. Because Arthur died, Henry VIII became king after their dad died. And Henry VIII even married Arthur’s widow, Catherine.
RE: Fact #13 (MKUltra Files Misfiled) – About 20,000 documents survived Helms’s cleanup because they were accidentally filed with the financial records, and someone found them in ’77 after a FOIA request.
The billing office—they never threw anything out.
RE: Fact #41 (World’s Oldest Pie Recipe) – I dunno why I bothered tracking down the original source, but here it is. I guess I just wanted the real recipe first, then it turned into fact-checking Wikipedia. Their sources are usually sketchy, but this one looks good.
RE: Fact #10 (FBI Ends Solo Interviews) – That Mindhunter scene was awesome. I really miss that show.
Seriously, how does so much crap get renewed, but not Mindhunter?
RE: Fact #18 (WWII Soldiers and Hard Drugs) – When I was about six, I read about the Rangers in *The Great Raid* and how they used speed to keep going when the Japanese were after them. Around the same time, my great aunt was really sick, and they said her heart wasn’t beating fast enough. So I asked my parents why we couldn’t give her something to speed it up.
So?
Yeah, she’s probably still giving that doctor from 1942 a hard time. He took her leg off thinking she had cancer and wouldn’t make it another year, but she outlived him!
She just turned 150!
Let’s see how this plays out, pal.
Her doctors ignored my advice, and she passed away. I always wondered if things would have been different if she’d met Walter White.
Yeah, they probably did something like that. If your heart’s lagging, they can give you meds to speed it up. But that’s usually not a permanent fix, and if your body’s giving out, those drugs might zap energy from other places and cause problems elsewhere.
Speeding it up might actually mess things up more. A faster heartbeat doesn’t mean it’s working right, and if there’s a problem, forcing it faster is like pushing a broken-down engine – you’ll just make things worse.
RE: Fact #47 (St. Patrick’s Captivity and Return) – No snakes in Ireland since…
RE: Fact #47 (St. Patrick’s Captivity and Return) – He didn’t start Christianity in Ireland, but he was one of the first to write it down.
RE: Fact #44 (Enzo Ferrari’s Reclusive Life) – Years ago, I got to visit Murray Walker at his place to talk business. He showed me his amazing motor racing stuff – the coolest thing was a Ferrari tile right by his front door! He said Enzo Ferrari himself gave it to him, and it was originally in the first Ferrari factory. Murray was a true legend, and he’s really missed.
I’ve got a signed copy of Murray’s autobiography – bumped into him in Canary Wharf once when he was flogging it. His dad, Graham Walker, supplied Ferrari’s early racing bikes, not cars, and that’s what Murray led with in his interview. It totally grabbed Enzo’s attention; unlike other journos, he got a real conversation going.
RE: Fact #19 (Mister Rogers vs. Sesame Street) – He really put a lot of thought into how his show looked. He hated all that flashy stuff.
Yeah, I get it. As a kid, it felt like he was really talking *with* me, not *down* at me. He was, and always will be, awesome.
RE: Fact #26 (Florence Nightingale’s Hammer Name) – Florence Nightingale totally crushed 16-hour hospital shifts way before anyone thought it was a thing, then went home and wrote books about it. I, on the other hand, need a nap after one email.
Look, Nightingale was pretty much bedridden after 30 because of a serious back problem. But honestly, she got way more done lying down than most of us do on our feet.
Wow, I didn’t realize her body gave out at 30, just like mine did! That’s something.
RE: Fact #5 (Tara Strong’s Realistic Cry) – My friend and I were playing the first Max Payne game one night, and got stuck on that creepy level where you follow the blood trail through the dark maze to find the baby. That baby was crying the whole time! His wife was pregnant and watching us, and asked us to stop ’cause she was starting to leak milk. I hate that level, but it’s still funny to think about.
Growing up, I was really into Max Payne. One time, my dad and I went to this creepy apartment – all dark and messy, the only light coming from a computer screen stuck on a game level. This guy, my dad’s friend, was super nervous, asking if we wanted a drink and if I was ready to play. He’d been stuck on that level forever, so I zipped through it. My dad and this guy were watching, totally stressed out the whole time. We all have some bad memories from that night, I think!
RE: Fact #8 (Cats Movie Made Webber Cry) – Lloyd Webber hated the “Cats” movie – he thought the music was totally off and it was so bad it made him buy a dog! His little Havanese pup became his best friend during lockdown, and he even managed to convince an airline to let the dog travel with him to New York, saying he needed the “therapy dog” because of the emotional damage the movie caused. The airline didn’t even ask for a doctor’s note after that!
He’s totally serious when he says it doesn’t work. That cat’s dance recital was a mess—only Skimbleshanks, danced by a pro, had any rhythm. Everyone else ignored the director’s suggestion to mess with the rhythm and then they couldn’t get the music or dance to work. Total musical fail.
Tom Hooper shouldn’t direct any more musicals.
I think it’s hilarious that he picked the cattiest dog ever!
RE: Fact #42 (Vera Zasulich’s Revenge Shooting) – On January 24, 1878, a young woman walked into the governor of St. Petersburg’s office and shot him with a gun. The trial that followed was a huge deal for the whole Russian Empire.
The case seemed simple at first. A woman with a criminal record walked in, shot a government official, and waited for the police. She was looking at a long prison sentence.
But things went sideways. The defense lawyer, a really great speaker, totally outmaneuvered the prosecution. The prosecutor messed up jury selection, and the defense lawyer used that to his advantage, picking jurors who were more likely to sympathize with the defendant.
The defense’s argument was brilliant. They painted the defendant as a victim of the oppressive government, shooting the governor to avenge a man who’d been unfairly punished. The governor was a tyrant, they argued, and the defendant was fighting injustice. The defense asked the jury to make a moral judgment, not just decide guilty or not guilty.
The jury found her not guilty, and the courtroom erupted. The Tsar was furious, and lots of people’s careers suffered. The defendant escaped and left the country. They tried to appeal the decision, but it was too late. There’s a story that when asked why she didn’t kill him, she said she was a terrorist, not a murderer, but it’s hard to verify.
RE: Fact #19 (Mister Rogers vs. Sesame Street) – He always took forever tying his shoes before the show started, so we got used to waiting around.
Sesame Street is seriously addictive learning for kids. Rogers was super relaxed.
It’s been seriously watered down. Back in the 80s, you had Luis and Maria in Dumbo with all the Muppets teaching kids about death, Bob falling for a deaf woman, and Bert and Ernie just being friends. Now it’s all “it’s a 5, but Elmo called it a 3.” Like Robert California said, it’s become a cultural ghetto – the Elmo era.
Just swapped out sweaters and coats. It was super relaxed.
Tom Hanks said filming that scene was tougher than he expected! Mister Rogers, though? He just made it look easy—years of practice, I bet.
We totally watched this dude change clothes, and never looked away.
Movie trailers now have tiny trailers before them because kids have the attention span of a gnat.
I’m only partly kidding, but seriously, he talks real slow and steady. His show’s super chill.
My favorite Mr. Rogers story is about this blind girl who wrote him, worried sick about his fish—she couldn’t see if he was feeding them! So, after that, he started saying on every show that he was feeding his fish. He answered every letter he got, too.
RE: Fact #50 (1950s Law Silenced Jesus) – So, he was all like, “Blessed are the cheese makers…”
RE: Fact #28 (Bonus Army vs. U.S. Troops) – Back in 1933, a new group of World War I vets showed up—a second Bonus Army, this time under Roosevelt. Instead of sending in the troops, FDR sent his wife, Eleanor. She went right to their camp, hung out with them, toured the place, even visited their hospital, sang songs, ate with them, and really listened to what they had to say.
RE: Fact #27 (Snowboarders Once Banned) – Back in the 90s, I recall seeing news reports about skiers trying to get snowboarding banned from the slopes.
RE: Fact #10 (FBI Ends Solo Interviews) – That guy was huge. He probably would’ve said the same thing even with two cops there. They should have cuffed him to the table.
That guy is huge.
He’s been in a wheelchair since a stroke, a while back. He’s not as big a threat now, but he’s still considered dangerous and likely to re-offend.
Two cops wouldn’t stand a chance against Kemper in a small room; the guy was huge—6’9″, 300 pounds. Even armed, they’d be in real trouble if he decided to hurt them.
Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers is the only one who really shows how a slasher could realistically kill people barehanded, because of his size. The others just kinda make it seem too easy.
RE: Fact #50 (1950s Law Silenced Jesus) – I’m not so sure about that. One reason is that article—I’ve seen what it says about Jesus’ face not being shown because of Wyler’s decision, and that Claude Heater played him uncredited. But I haven’t found anything else to back up the Hollywood Reporter bit. Also, the “British law” thing is pretty vague, and the whole claim seems a little far-fetched. What some cinema licensing person might have said is a separate issue altogether.
RE: Fact #24 (WWII Hawaii Emergency Currency) – I’ve got a one-dollar bill from Hawaii.
My grandpa had a huge pile of them. I listed the whole thing for Grandma after he died. Turns out she’d been using a bunch of silver quarters as grocery money for ages, but I stopped her. Then, after she passed, my aunt and uncle got to the house first, and poof! – the collection was way smaller. I made the inventory lists myself! So how can you say they weren’t there?
So, I inherited this from my dad a few years ago after he passed, and he got it from my grandpa. I also have a couple of super old two-dollar bills and some really old dollar coins. I don’t think they’re worth more than what they’re printed for, but I wanted to get them all looked at, just in case. I couldn’t find anyone around here to do it, and I didn’t have any luck asking for help online either.
RE: Fact #28 (Bonus Army vs. U.S. Troops) – People were living in Hoovervilles, starving with their families. The cops shot at the poor to protect the rich – same old story.
MacArthur decided to do it all by himself; he wasn’t told to.
RE: Fact #5 (Tara Strong’s Realistic Cry) – That’s a resume booster!
She was doing great, for sure… but after our second kid, every time I opened that one door, it squeaked so loud it made my wife start lactating.
Ever try lubing up that door?
So, what’s your biggest flaw?
Uh, sometimes I make women lactate.
You’re in! Forget about your strengths.
Great, ’cause I’m not one for repeating myself.
*Firm handshake
Basically, that’s how she landed the Blizzard job.
RE: Fact #43 (Singapore’s Massive Reserves) – Singapore’s reserves are a bit of a mystery. The government says using them for more social programs would hurt future generations, but they also brag about how wealthy the country is. Nobody really knows how much money they actually have—it’s a big secret to keep things safe from troublemakers. Even a past president couldn’t get a straight answer! The main thing is, Singapore’s success comes from its good reputation. Whether it’s super-rich or not, isn’t the real issue; it’s what people *think* about them.
Singapore’s central bank is different. Instead of messing with interest rates like most others, they focus on exchange rates. They buy and sell currency to keep the exchange rate within a certain range, preventing big swings in import and export costs. Revealing how much currency they have would really mess up their whole system.
It’s just not feasible for SG to control its money using interest rates. We’re too small – if we messed with them, businesses would borrow elsewhere, and we’d lose a ton of cash fast.
They’re like the neutral party, way over there.
To me, Switzerland’s like the Singapore of Europe.
RE: Fact #15 (Goalie Earns, Never Plays) – He was pretty much their extra coach, unofficially.
I remember reading an factrepublic article about a player who got signed just because everyone loved him. Sometimes you need someone with good vibes.
Superstar Zlatan Atmosferovič
Loads of older guys, like in their thirties, end up doing that backup goalie thing – without even being officially on the team. They’re like the team’s coach, assistant, cheerleader, and peacemaker all rolled into one.
RE: Fact #46 (Mysterious English Sweating Sickness) – Prince Arthur dying young totally changed world history. One sick kid, and bam – the British Empire.
RE: Fact #6 ($25M Stolen via Deepfake) – It should’ve been obvious when they asked for payment in gift cards.
He’s at Walgreens, all like, “These Google Play and iTunes cards only go up to $500? I need way more than that! You guys don’t have, like, $50,000 more in the back, do you?”
The minimum-wage Walgreens employee, thinking about how long it’ll take to process that many cards: “Nope. And if we did, I’d be outta here.”
My buddy worked at the Kroger money center. A lot of his time was spent sending money for people to their families, but most of it was telling older folks the IRS doesn’t take Amazon gift cards.
RE: Fact #3 (Scrabble Ban Sparks Backlash) – At Christmas, we play Scrabble at home, but because we use so many tiles for crafts, we keep going until someone cusses or plays a rude word.
What if the first word is pen*s?
My dad gets told to slow down, then we keep going until he does it again.
RE: Fact #8 (Cats Movie Made Webber Cry) – ALW says he warned the Cats director, Tom Hooper, during filming, but Hooper blew him off. Considering Hooper’s reputation for being a jerk to the crew, it’s totally believable.
He’s a real jerk; I’ve worked with him.
RE: Fact #38 (Burr Killed Hamilton While VP) – Anything goes in New Jersey.
RE: Fact #28 (Bonus Army vs. U.S. Troops) – They wanted their wartime bonuses thirteen years early. That’s a big deal, and it doesn’t excuse what the government did, but people tend to forget it.
RE: Fact #40 (Smooth Brain Is a Disorder) – That’s why some folks call people “smooth brain,” right?
I always figured people meant koalas, since they’re known for having smooth brains. I had no idea humans could have it too, until today.
A smooth brain isn’t so smart; all those wrinkles help it hold more brain cells or something.
Nah, I think it’s just about how brains with folds are way more powerful than smooth-brained animal brains.
RE: Fact #45 (Florence’s Lottery-Selected Government) – They had really short terms because they couldn’t stay away from their businesses, so they held “elections” four times a year. That really messed with the government’s ability to keep things going smoothly.
They weren’t just living in city hall, they were locked up in it! The thinking was, if you can’t get to someone, you can’t corrupt them. Food came down in buckets.
It all depends on the time period. Even if the names were picked at random, stuff could still be rigged. Like, that time the Ferrara council—the Pope and the Eastern Roman Emperor, the whole shebang—had to relocate because of the plague. Florence got picked, and Cosimo de’ Medici… well, let’s just say he made sure *he* was president so he could personally schmooze with all the important visitors. He was probably the only guy in history powerful enough to get away with that.
RE: Fact #31 (Powhatan Chieftain’s Deadly Trap) – Heads up, if a girl asks you out, she’s probably not into you romantically; she’s planning to kill you to stop some terrible genocide.
RE: Fact #37 (Heimweh: Swiss Homesickness) – Fun fact: Germans also have a word, fernweh, for that longing to travel somewhere far off.
It’s also like wanderlust, which fits in both languages.
Wanderlust is a German word, by the way! It’s a bit more precise in German, but we get the idea.
RE: Fact #17 (Ana Obregón Becomes Grandmother) – So, a 27-year-old guy’s sperm made a baby with a donor egg and a surrogate mom. Then, his 68-year-old mom adopted the kid.
RE: Fact #37 (Heimweh: Swiss Homesickness) – Turns out, everyone misses Switzerland.
Watch out, or you’ll accidentally invade Liechtenstein instead of Switzerland!
RE: Fact #24 (WWII Hawaii Emergency Currency) – They used special, differently colored money to pay troops and locals in North Africa—much harder for Axis forgers to copy. The Treasury could also cancel them easily. In Hawaii, they just overprinted existing bills with “HAWAII” because it was quicker to ship a simple printing press from the mainland and print right over the local cash.
They even made their own money – Francs, Lira, Marks, and Yen – to use in France, Italy, Germany, and Japan.
Someone saw that North Africa pamphlet and got really into the whole overprinted money thing.
Ha! Me too!
RE: Fact #23 (Tarantino Saves Video Archives) – I worked part-time at a video store during college back in the early 2000s. These days, I’m in my forties, and I’m probably one of the younger folks who can say they did that. The store I worked at lasted about ten years after I left—one of the very last to close. There’s that one Blockbuster still hanging on, plus maybe a couple others, but most people who worked in video stores back then are probably in their thirties at least now.
Scarecrow Video in Seattle’s still hanging in there, but they’re really struggling and always doing fundraisers to stay afloat.
RE: Fact #27 (Snowboarders Once Banned) – there was no such thing as a snow board in the 1960s,or 70s for that matter, and it wasn’t until the late 90s that snow boards became common
RE: Fact #30 (Laser Sights and The Terminator) – Not true. The lasersight in the movie demanded so much power, the had to run a hidden powercable through Arnolds jacket to an external power source. It took years befor laser sight got down to a practical size.