1 Porky Pig’s Original Voice
Joe Dougherty, the original voice actor for Looney Tunes’ Porky Pig, had an uncontrollable stutter. His lengthy recording sessions significantly increased production costs. As a result, Mel Blanc replaced him, allowing the stutter to be controlled and used for comedic effect.
2. After filming John Wick 4, Keanu Reeves gifted stunt performers customized T-shirts displaying how many times they “died” in the film-some exceeding 20 deaths. Additionally, he presented his personal stunt team with custom Rolex Submariner watches as a token of appreciation.
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King received 11 Oscar nominations and won all of them, making it the biggest sweep in Oscar history.
4. Dr. Harold Shipman, an English serial killer, allegedly murdered so many patients that his trial charged him with only 15 murders-just 5% of his suspected victims.
5. At age nine, actress Jodie Foster suffered a lion attack on the set of Napoleon and Samantha, leaving scars on her back and stomach. She observed the crew flee as the lion held her sideways in its mouth and shook her “like a doll.” Although the lion released her when commanded, the traumatic experience left her with lifelong ailurophobia (fear of cats).
6 King’s Secret Elephant Hunt
In 2012, Spain’s King Juan Carlos I secretly went elephant hunting in Botswana. However, when he suffered a severe injury and required a medical flight home, the trip became public, triggering a scandal over its cost-especially since he was an honorary president of the World Wildlife Fund at the time.
7. When AOL charged users an hourly fee for internet access, it added 15 seconds to each session and rounded up to the next full minute. For example, a user connected for 12 minutes and 46 seconds would be billed for 14 minutes.
8. Despite being the title character, Michael Keaton had only 17 minutes of screen time in Beetlejuice.
9. The mysterious 1997 death of “Baby Garnet” remained unsolved until 2022, when a woman’s at-home DNA test revealed that her grandmother had committed the crime.
10. Washington, D.C. has a Titanic monument, funded by women, to honor the men who sacrificed their lives so that women and children could survive. While over 70% of women and children were rescued, only 20% of men survived.
11 Forgotten Song, Huge Payday
Singer James Carter (also a former convict, musician, and shipping clerk) once received a $20,000 royalty check for a song featured in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which he had recorded 40 years earlier but had completely forgotten.
12. After Germany’s 7-1 victory over Brazil in the 2014 World Cup, Pornhub had to issue a plea asking users to stop uploading match highlights to the site.
13. Ancient Roman tourists visiting Egyptian tombs often left negative reviews in graffiti. Some complained that only the sarcophagus was interesting, while others were frustrated by their inability to read the hieroglyphs. Ironically, these criticisms later became valuable historical records.
14. In 2017, five bald men were murdered in Mozambique because their killers believed that bald heads contained gold.
15. In 2006, a jury awarded $5.6 million to the family of a man whose surgeon implanted a screwdriver shaft into his spine after discovering that the two planned titanium rods were missing. The screwdriver later snapped, requiring three more back surgeries. The man died two years later.
16 Saudi Arabia’s First Movie
In 2018, Saudi Arabia lifted its 35-year ban on cinemas. The first movie screened publicly after the ban’s removal was The Emoji Movie.
17. For 73 years, people did not believe Titanic survivors who claimed the ship split in half before sinking. One survivor even recalled people arguing with her about what she had seen. This skepticism persisted until 1985, when the wreckage was finally discovered in two pieces.
18. The 1944 Nobel Prize for the discovery of nuclear fission was awarded solely to German physicist Otto Hahn, despite his collaboration with Lise Meitner, a Jewish-German scientist forced into exile. Meitner not only contributed significantly to the work but was also the first to use the term “fission” and explain the process.
19. A Brazilian judge ordered identical twin brothers to pay child support after DNA tests failed to determine which of them had fathered a child. Since both men refused to confess, the judge ruled that they were depriving the girl of her right to know her biological father.
20. J.R.R. Tolkien disliked the title The Two Towers and repeatedly changed his mind about which towers it referred to. There are actually five towers relevant to the story.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Armstrong’s Missing “A”
Neil Armstrong claimed he said, “One small step for a man…” but the word “A” was lost in transmission.
22. In 1978, a hostage crisis involving 30 people in Melbourne, Australia, ended when the perpetrator’s mother stormed in, hit him over the head with her handbag, and told him to “stop being so stupid.”
23. In 2019, Robert Kirkman abruptly ended The Walking Dead comic book series-the foundation of a multibillion-dollar franchise-without any prior warning. He concluded issue #193 with a letter explaining that the series was over, having chosen to end it on his terms while also partly concerned that he lacked more material to continue.
24. A 2018 study found that male gorillas who actively participated in babysitting duties sired more than five times the offspring of those who avoided childcare. These gorillas were often affectionate, allowing infant and juvenile gorillas to cuddle, play, and rest in their nests.
25. In 1919, Britain’s most remote colony, Tristan da Cunha, learned about World War I only after it had both started and ended-having gone without resupply for 10 years.
RE: Fact #41 (Giancarlo Esposito’s Darkest Moment) – I recall his interview about playing Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian. He loved teasing his daughter by pretending to “squeeze” Grogu – classic dad joke!
RE: Fact #35 (Accidental Discovery of YInMn Blue) – I’m an artist, and I got my hands on some amazing blue pigment. Seriously, it’s a gorgeous blue! My daughter’s a biology student at Oregon State, so that helped me get some. It’s non-toxic and just beautiful.
Blue is a tricky color because it can fade. The amazing blue you see in Renaissance paintings came from lapis lazuli (also called ultramarine), a semi-precious stone from Afghanistan. It’s the same blue in King Tut’s mask.
Lapis was super expensive, more valuable than gold, but it didn’t fade like other blues. Most art-store blues today are synthetic and not great for the planet.
YIN-Mn blue is awesome.
RE: Fact #13 (Roman Graffiti: Bad Reviews) – “Beware of Ea-Nasir’s copper; it’s not what he claims.”
RE: Fact #35 (Accidental Discovery of YInMn Blue) – This color is super hard to find. Some company bought up all the rights to use it—they’re making roof sealant or something with it, I heard. You can get tiny tubes from Gamblin, but they’re ridiculously expensive! All I want is enough to paint a wall or car—it’s such a cool color and has great cooling properties—but it’s almost impossible to get enough.
RE: Fact #9 (DNA Test Solves Infanticide) – Sixty-one-year-old Nancy Gerwatowski admitted it was her baby, and now she could spend life in prison. Little Baby Garnet suffocated, and a maintenance guy found her in a campground toilet in Michigan back in June 1997. The town really took her in—they called her Baby Garnet—and chipped in to bury her in a white casket with a headstone, not far from where they found her.
RE: Fact #10 (Titanic Monument in D.C.) – It used to be right in the middle of the city. But after a while, people forgot about the disaster, so they moved it to a quieter spot by the Potomac. Some folks even made a little memorial there for the victims of that American Airlines flight that crashed into the helicopter—it’s close to where it happened.
It’s a bit of a trek, but it’s gorgeous. I saw fresh flowers there a couple weeks back. I wondered who’s still mourning the Titanic after all this time, but the helicopter crash explanation makes more sense.
RE: Fact #21 (Armstrong’s Missing “A”) – That’s way clearer than repeating yourself.
RE: Fact #16 (Saudi Arabia’s First Movie) – Imagine paying for tickets to this huge historical event, only to have your eyes assaulted by terrible visuals.
RE: Fact #49 (Elderly Americans Lost $3 Billion) – It’s usually pretty easy to spot a scam, but older folks can get tricked because they aren’t as used to things like online banking. Once scammers get better with AI and hacking, though, it’ll be much tougher to tell. And seriously, why does my bank send emails with links?! That’s a huge red flag for a legit bank.
RE: Fact #48 (Child Actor Named His Siblings) – Getting renamed by your more successful brother just because he’s successful? That’s a real bummer.
RE: Fact #42 (Simón Bolívar Freed His Slaves) – Bolivia’s actually named after him.
RE: Fact #9 (DNA Test Solves Infanticide) – Do the police ever look at AncestryDNA databases?
RE: Fact #47 (Hawaiian Home Built on Wrong Lot) – Growing up, the guy building our neighborhood messed up on one of the last houses. He put the foundation too close to the neighbor’s property because he thought the fence was the property line, but it wasn’t – it was set back a bunch. Nobody noticed until the house was almost done, then everything stopped for months while lawyers fought about it. Finally, he knocked it down and built a new one farther away.
RE: Fact #1 (Porky Pig’s Original Voice) – That executive was probably like – Hey Mel, the last guy had a serious disability that was a real headache. We liked the effect it gave his character, but dealing with him was tough, and we don’t want to pay him. So, could you check out a few short videos and just copy his performance? We let him go today.
RE: Fact #13 (Roman Graffiti: Bad Reviews) – One star — everything’s in Egyptian, and nobody’s got any decent garum.
RE: Fact #18 (Lise Meitner’s Nobel Snub) – Even that didn’t fix things for her. The Nobel Committee gave Hahn the 1944 Chemistry prize for discovering how to split heavy atoms, but it’s weird because Hahn didn’t even use the word “fission” in his first paper—Meitner came up with that word later in a letter.
RE: Fact #21 (Armstrong’s Missing “A”) – I bumped into Buzz Aldrin once, and he seemed a bit full of himself. He was like, “Hi, I’m Buzz Aldrin, second guy on the Moon—after Neil, of course.”
That’s a killer line! I mostly know Buzz Aldrin from those awesome street fight videos I’ve seen on facebook.
RE: Fact #43 (Massey Hall’s Affordable Tickets) – The Masseys really gave a lot back to Ontario over the years. Many of them, like Hart, seemed to genuinely believe in helping others. Back in my hometown, Newcastle, Ontario – where they started their business way back in the 1800s – they kept giving even after moving to Toronto. They paid for a community hall in the 1920s, did a ton for the town’s United Church (even building a hall that’s still used!), and supported lots of other projects that helped build the town.
RE: Fact #31 (Sharks Are Older Than Polaris) – Sharks have been around longer than trees.
Not as old as the hills
RE: Fact #22 (Mom Ends Hostage Crisis) – Wow, imagine ending up in jail for *that* – nobody saw it coming!
RE: Fact #17 (Titanic Split: Disbelieved for Decades) – Man, I’d hate to survive the Titanic only to have some clueless people who weren’t even there tell me what happened.
RE: Fact #1 (Porky Pig’s Original Voice) – So, you’re replacing me? I get it, my stutter doesn’t work for the character. But wait, the new guy’s *going* to stutter on purpose? 🤨
RE: Fact #25 (War News Arrives a Decade Late) – American Johnny Lambert was the first guy to settle there permanently, showing up in 1810. He even declared himself king, saying he owned the place because he was the first one there. Sadly, he drowned two years later.
RE: Fact #27 (Deadly Hazing at St. John’s) – My school was brutal; they shaved the heads of first-years, piled on the rules, and since you could spot a newbie a mile away, that whole year was a nightmare. One year, they nearly drowned a freshman—the pool got filled in, and nobody even got in trouble.
RE: Fact #30 (Ben Franklin’s Free Inventions) – Honestly, if you’re already loaded, idea theft’s less of a worry.
RE: Fact #7 (AOL’s Hidden Billing Trick) – That’s why you snagged that promo CD-ROM with tons of free stuff on it.
Yeah, and then you were stuck waiting for a fresh batch of internet because you’d used it all up.
My local Blockbuster was giving them away!
RE: Fact #36 (North Korean Brides in South Korea) – Charging me that much for a few dates? I’d tell you where to go.
You haven’t seen anything yet.
RE: Fact #29 (Woolworth’s Transition to Foot Locker) – Hey, where I live, we still have a Woolworths! It’s the last one left in the whole US, I think. It’s closed for a remodel right now, but it should be back open around August, I think.
RE: Fact #19 (Twins Ordered to Pay Support) – So, a judge in Goiás decided both guys’ names should be on the baby’s birth certificate. The twins—let’s call them Fernando and Fabrício—kept their real names secret for legal reasons. The judge basically said one of them was being a real jerk, trying to dodge responsibility for the baby. He called it unacceptable. Apparently, these guys used their identical looks to pull off some serious dating shenanigans and then used that same resemblance to avoid being caught.
RE: Fact #40 (Hidden Comics Worth $3.5 Million) – His great uncle, when he was a kid, bought this amazing comic book collection. Some of the highlights and how much they sold for:
* Detective Comics #27: $523,000
* Action Comics #1: $299,000
* Batman #1: $275,000
* Captain America #2: $114,000
This Virginia kid had a real talent for picking winners! Out of the 345 comics he bought, 44 were among the top 100 in the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide’s list of Golden Age comics. They were all super well-kept. A comic book expert, J.C. Vaughn, said the whole collection is mind-blowing! Most Golden Age comics—from the late 30s to the 50s—are gone because of the war, wear and tear, or moms throwing them away. For example, only about 100 copies of Action Comics #1 are left!
Rorrer, from California, got half the collection from his great uncle and his mom gave the other half to his brother. Rorrer didn’t know how valuable they were until he talked to a coworker, who wondered if he had Action Comics #1. He checked, and there it was! That’s when he really started looking into how much the collection was worth.