1 Marines Outsmart AI Surveillance
A squad of U.S. Marines in a DARPA Squad X drill managed to bypass an AI-powered security camera in the United States. The experiment, which took place as a controlled test in 2023, demonstrated the ease with which creative tactics could fool the system. Two marines evaded detection by somersaulting for 300 meters, another pair pretended to be a cardboard box, and one even disguised himself as a bush. The AI failed to detect any of them.
2. In 2024, a group of flat Earth YouTubers joined The Final Experiment expedition to Antarctica. There, they directly witnessed the 24-hour Antarctic sun, a phenomenon impossible under flat Earth models. The experience led at least one participant to publicly admit they were wrong and to leave the flat Earth community.
3. Weird Al Yankovic never received permission from Prince to parody his songs. Before the American Music Awards, where they were seated in the same row, Prince’s management sent Yankovic a telegram demanding he avoid eye contact with the artist.
4. Intrusive sleep, often seen in individuals with ADHD, occurs when they experience sudden drowsiness or fall asleep after losing interest in a task. This happens because the brain quickly disengages from the uninteresting activity, leading to a rapid drop in alertness.
5. During the Parkland school shooting in Florida in 2018, student Anthony Borges sustained critical injuries while protecting his classmates with his body. In 2024, a judge granted Borges the exclusive rights to the name of shooter Nikolas Cruz, recognizing his role as a victim. This ruling prevents Cruz from giving interviews or signing deals with film producers or authors without Borges’ permission.
6 Extinct Falkland Islands Wolf
The Falkland Islands wolf, also known as the warrah, was the islands’ only native land mammal. It was so tame that it would approach humans without fear, even swimming out to greet arriving boats. Settlers hunted it to extinction by 1876 because it was too friendly to run away, making it the first canid species to become extinct in recorded history.
7. Studies in the United States have found that college graduates who joined fraternities often earn higher incomes later in life. This income boost comes despite the fact that fraternity members generally have lower grades compared to non-members. Researchers attribute the difference to networking, social capital, and access to career opportunities gained through fraternity connections.
8. In Japan, it is common for married women to fully control the couple’s finances. Husbands typically hand over their monthly paychecks and receive an allowance from their wives.
9. Before landing the role of T-1000 in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991), Robert Patrick secretly battled substance addiction. However, he completely sobered up to meet the athletic demands of the character throughout the filming process.
10. English speakers often feel uncomfortable if a conversation pause lasts more than four seconds. In contrast, Japanese speakers are comfortable with pauses of up to eight seconds.
11 Heroic Brother Saves Sister
In 2023, a 13 year old Michigan teenager named Owen Burns saved his 8 year old sister from a would-be kidnapper by firing a slingshot and striking the 17 year old assailant in the head and chest. The attacker fled but was arrested shortly afterward at a nearby gas station and had injuries consistent with the slingshot blasts.
12. In the early 19th century, Robert Owen, a wealthy Welsh textile mill owner, pioneered the idea of “8 hours labor, 8 hours recreation, and 8 hours rest.” He implemented this in his New Lanark factory community in Scotland, where he improved working conditions and promoted education. Owen later carried the experiment to the United States, founding New Harmony, Indiana, as part of his vision for a radically equal socialist society.
13. In 1857, Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, famous for fairy tales like The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling, stayed as a guest at Charles Dickens’ home in England. During his visit, Andersen asked that one of Dickens’ sons shave him daily, explaining that this was a Danish custom when hosting male guests. Dickens, unsettled by the request, instead arranged for Andersen to have a standing appointment at a nearby barbershop.
14. In 1943, psychiatrist Leo Kanner formally diagnosed American banker Donald Gray Triplett, from Mississippi, with autism, referring to him as “Case 1” in his landmark study. This diagnosis marked the first clinically recognized case of autism and laid the foundation for modern autism research. Triplett went on to lead a long, independent life, working at a bank for decades and passing away at the age of 89 in 2023.
15. In the late 1950s, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was hired to write for the NBC series Riverboat, set in 1860s Mississippi. When he learned that the producers intended to exclude Black characters entirely, he strongly objected. His repeated arguments over representation cost him the job.
16 Statistician Outsmarts Lottery Game
A Canadian geological statistician named Mohan Srivastava discovered a flaw in Ontario’s Tic-Tac-Toe scratch-off lottery that let him predict winners with about 90% accuracy. However, he found it to be less profitable and enjoyable than his consulting job as a statistician; he instead informed the gaming commission, which pulled the game the next day.
17. In 2016, someone at the National Health Service in England sent a test email to 840,000 colleagues, leading to one of the largest reply-all storms. The incident resulted in 168 million emails and disrupted the health system for half a day.
18. In 2022, Matthew Perry estimated that he had attended approximately 6,000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
19. In 1857, a book named The Impending Crisis of the South analyzed census data to show that free states had better economic growth than slave states. It argued that abolishing slavery would improve economic prospects for poor Southern whites. Southern states reacted by executing those found with the book.
20. In 1996, McDonald’s attempted to sue the owner of a family-owned restaurant in Fairbury, Illinois, called “McDonald’s Family Restaurant,” which had opened in 1956. Ironically, the owner, Ronald McDonald, won the case.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Norland College: Elite Nanny Training
Norland College, the world’s oldest and most prestigious nanny school located in England, trains nannies in self-defense and evasive driving alongside traditional childcare skills. Often described as “Mary Poppins meets James Bond,” some graduates go on to earn six-figure salaries (as of August 2025).
22. In 2009, a New Zealander named Leo Gao discovered that his bank had deposited $10 million into his account by mistake. He and his girlfriend fled the country, igniting an international manhunt that spanned two years until his capture in Hong Kong. Gao was later sentenced but paroled after 16 months, even though the court believed he still controlled the $3.7 million that was never recovered.
23. In 2018, Japanese Minister Yoshitaka Sakurada admitted that he had never used a computer in his life, despite being in charge of the country’s cybersecurity at the time.
24. Freddie Mercury was born with four extra teeth, resulting in a prominent overbite. Although self-conscious about his teeth, he never had them fixed, believing the extra space contributed to his vocal ability. He feared that altering his teeth might change his voice.
25. In 1995, Iraqi generals Hussein Kamel al-Majid and his brother Saddam Kamel-both cousins of Saddam Hussein and married to his daughters-defected to Jordan and began cooperating with Western intelligence. The following year, Saddam lured them back to Iraq with promises of forgiveness. Within three days of their return in 1996, both brothers were killed in an armed standoff with members of their own clan.
RE: Fact #13 (Andersen’s Odd Request at Dickens’ Home) – There are also these interesting stories:
One evening at dinner, when Dickens offered his arm to a lady, Anderson went ahead and took it himself and walked arm-in-arm with Dickens into the dining room.
Since Anderson was a country boy and worried about being pick-pocketed in the city, Dickens sarcastically wrote that one time a cab driver took Anderson on a detour through London. Anderson, thinking he was about to be robbed and murdered, stuffed all his belongings into his boots.
How big were his fu*king boots?
RE: Fact #23 (Cybersecurity Minister Without Computer Skills) – This feels very Japanese.
No better cyber security.
Yeah, I agree. He landed that role because he was loyal to his party and supported the Prime Minister, not because he actually knew anything about cybersecurity.
Yeah, I get that. I worked with someone in Japan who had never used a USB stick before. Trying to explain how to move files between her work laptop and desktop was super frustrating. She also thought Disney was a Japanese company.
And man, we were still using Excel for *everything*. If we needed to fill out and print a document, it was somehow created in Excel instead of Word. Seriously, Excel was used for everything.
My company’s workforce is on the older side, and it’s pretty similar over there too. Extra points because everything is still in XLS format, not XLSX. I even found an old Lotus 1-2-3 file on our shared drive not too long ago.
RE: Fact #7 (Fraternity Members Earn More) – People are talking about the networking effect of frats here, and it’s the same reason why so many presidents and early U.S. politicians were Freemasons. Having prior wealth/connections definitely plays an even bigger role, though.
Yeah, George W. Bush was a C- student.
It’s also about the networking, connecting with people both older and younger than you. When I joined a fraternity as a freshman, I immediately met seniors who already had jobs lined up. We talked about their roles, how they landed those positions, and I stayed in touch with them after college. This really helped me out – by my sophomore year, I’d switched my career path to a field I hadn’t even considered before. I understood what people entering that field were earning and what their first year was typically like. Other groups can definitely offer similar benefits, but fraternities really focus on the social side of things. Honestly, I was working way harder than my friends who weren’t in fraternities because I had a much clearer goal.
RE: Fact #8 (Japanese Wives Manage Finances) – This sounds like what Adam Smith called “specialization of labor.”
RE: Fact #49 (Parents’ Favorite Child Revealed) – I borrowed my mom’s phone and put an entry in her contacts called “My Favorite.” Then, at Christmas, with everyone around, I got them talking about how phones collect data and know a lot about you. To prove my point, I said, “Try it. Mom, tell your phone to call your favorite.” And sure enough, my phone started ringing right in front of my whole family. LOL.
I did that to my best mate’s phone. I just changed my name to ‘Darling <3'. He never changed it back, so I did the same to mine.
RE: Fact #37 (Jesse Heiman: The Ultimate Extra) – It’s wild that someone can be in TV and film for so long without ever landing a significant role.
RE: Fact #41 (Anguilla’s AI Domain Boom) – Wow so the .ai domain is actually Anguilla’s national domain.
All the two-letter top-level domains are country code TLDs, but not all of them actually represent countries.
RE: Fact #3 (Weird Al and Prince’s Encounter) – Seriously, if you have a problem with Weird Al Yankovic of all people, you’re totally in the wrong.
You know, like Mister Rogers and Steve Irwin.
RE: Fact #44 (Groening’s Quick Creation of Simpsons) – This guy created a property out of nowhere, and it turned out to be a huge success.
That reminds me of Gerard Way. I heard he wanted to get into comic books and started My Chemical Romance after seeing what happened on 9/11. He ended up making music history!
So, I heard he was looking to get into the comic book world. Turns out, he ended up creating The Umbrella Academy as a comic!
Yeah, so, historians don’t totally agree on the exact details, but it’s pretty similar to how Mickey Mouse was made! Walt Disney left Universal because they didn’t give him the animation budget he was promised. He and some other animators who left with him needed a new main character since their old one belonged to Universal. There are different stories about how it happened, but basically, they came up with Mortimer Mouse. He was supposed to be like Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin, but then Walt’s wife thought Mortimer sounded a bit too serious, so they changed his name to Mickey, which sounded more kid-friendly.
So, it turns out “Mortimer Mouse” was actually used for a new bad guy in Disney’s House of Mouse. That was a great show, and he was a pretty good antagonist. He was always trying to win Minnie’s heart, but it never worked out for him. He was a bit of a slimy character, too.
Back then, Universal still owned it. Disney famously traded Al Michaels to NBC for the rights to Ozzie.
RE: Fact #31 (Octavian Orders Caesarion’s Death) – It’s pretty wild how much of history is just about people killing each other.
We tend to remember the wild parts of history because they’re just so wild! Most of it is just folks trying to get by, local rulers doing their thing, and then it all repeats. We really enjoy a good tale, especially about people long gone.
Yeah, most of what we know about history is written by the people in charge back then. Scribes weren’t really focused on everyday folks, like a farmer who just lived a quiet life, had a family, stayed in his village, and passed away from pneumonia in his sixties.
RE: Fact #17 (NHS Email Storm Disrupts Operations) – My company, a Fortune 500, has had a few of these situations in the last five years. The absolute worst are those jerks who reply all saying, “Don’t reply all!”
RE: Fact #47 (Airlines Thrive on Loyalty Programs) – They totally don’t lose money flying passengers. They just report to the IRS that they lose money flying passengers. Those are two totally different things.
If you check out any airline’s 10K filings, you’ll see that ticket revenue alone doesn’t cover their operating costs.
RE: Fact #19 (1857 Book Challenges Slavery Economics) – This book’s story is wild! So, this openly racist guy from the South figured out that slavery was actually bad for the economy, especially for poor white Southerners. He boldly said that Northern abolitionists were actually the South’s best friends, right before the Civil War. He even used scientific data to show slavery was old-fashioned. Basically, he became the most impactful anti-slavery voice, and he was from the South!
His claims totally messed things up politically and led to people being executed because the Southern establishment was so mad about what he said.
You know, it’s wild to say, but it actually looks like he had some academic integrity after all.
RE: Fact #32 (Schwarzenegger Keeps Lenin Bust) -Is he calling Lenin a loser, or implying he shows them to losers? Either way, it’s a pretty funny idea.
He’s saying Lenin is a loser. This quote is from a Rolling Stone article about him in his office. He gestures to bronze busts on the west side of the room, mentioning Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. A few feet to the east is a bust of Vladimir Lenin. He says the idea is to show “losers” and “winners,” pointing to Lenin and then westward.
No matter what you think of his politics, Lenin was a real winner – he won the revolution.
I’m not a Marxist-Leninist, but that’s pretty cringey.
RE: Fact #34 (Tom Petty Fights Album Pricing) – A dollar back in 1981 is like $3.54 today. So, that $8.98 price back then would be about $31.79 now, and the $9.98 price would be around $35.33.
RE: Fact #42 (Lamberto Maggiorani’s Real-Life Struggle) – A grand in 1948 is like thirteen grand now.
Honestly, that’s still pretty much nothing.
RE: Fact #10 (Cultural Differences in Conversation Pauses) – Looks like they tried to figure out how long it takes for Finnish people, but they’re still waiting!
RE: Fact #28 (Zero Dark Thirty’s Unauthorized Clip) – So, that new Amazon movie, War of the Worlds, apparently uses actual footage from wildfires and tragedies, like a plane crash. They’ve edited it with aliens and didn’t even ask the families for permission.
They really seemed to base the plane crash in the video on a real one, but it’s not the same video footage.
The Creator movie used actual footage from the 2020 Beirut explosion in their trailer. I thought that was pretty disrespectful.
I haven’t watched it myself, but it does sound a bit odd. Generally, the person who filmed something has the rights to share it. Also, if the clips didn’t show or include the voices of specific people, I’m not sure the families would really have grounds to object.
RE: Fact #23 (Cybersecurity Minister Without Computer Skills) – That’s a clever way to stay safe from cyber threats!
I recall a quote from a US military person saying one type of plane was unhackable because nobody understood the old operating system that controlled everything anymore.
RE: Fact #11 (Heroic Brother Saves Sister) – Looks like he got hit in the face with a rock or marble, which made him easy to spot.
Slingshots are pretty serious. I wouldn’t want to get hit by one, even if it’s a 13-year-old using it.
Saw a clip once of a guy using an actual slingshot and wow.
No wonder Goliath got his stuff rocked by David. And maybe it was a blessed holy slingshot, too.
You can get surprisingly accurate with a slingshot, especially after practicing. It’s like anything else, the more you do it, the better you get.
RE: Fact #46 (High Casualty Rate for Flamethrower Units) – I saw a YouTube video about this just last week. Apparently, on Iwo Jima, some Japanese soldiers managed to grab a flamethrower and drag the person using it back into their bunker. The US forces couldn’t reach him, and they could hear him screaming for days.
The Vietcong would do the same to the Marines. They had tunnels right outside the bases and would torture captured soldiers nearby so they could hear it.
RE: Fact #8 (Japanese Wives Manage Finances) – In cultures where guys aren’t usually managing the household stuff, it’s pretty normal for them to focus on making money while their wives handle the bills, expenses, and things like mortgages. Personally, I wouldn’t feel secure in a relationship like that. Mine’s pretty much the opposite, and we’re doing great.
Loads of Japanese guys say this is why they’re not keen on getting married. They’re stuck in that tough work culture, hardly have time to see their wives, and then their wives take most of their earnings, leaving them with just a bit of allowance. For many men, that doesn’t sound like a great life, so they’d rather stay single, manage their own cash, and spend their time and money on hobbies and other stuff instead of a wife.
RE: Fact #43 (Tragic Selfie with a Walrus) – So, this guy Lijun was taking selfies and videos with a walrus that weighed about 1.5 tons, probably to post on social media. After taking some pics, the walrus grabbed him from behind and pulled him into the water. Everyone there, including the zoo staff at Xixiajou Wildlife Park, thought it was just the walrus playing.
Witnesses said the walrus held onto the man, dragging him into the water and tossing him around. Then, the walrus’s regular trainer, Duan, who had looked after the animal for over ten years since it was a baby and was apparently its closest human friend, jumped in to try and save Lijun.
But when the walrus saw Duan, it went straight for him, and even though Duan was a strong swimmer, the walrus grabbed him too. The walrus ended up holding both of them and dragging them underwater, tragically drowning them both.
Even if you train a wild animal really well, it’s still a wild animal at heart.
Yeah, even regular pets like cats and dogs can scratch or nip you sometimes. It’s just that they’re so much smaller than us, so it’s usually not a big deal. But if an animal the size of a small car hurt you, even accidentally, it would be really bad.
My dog, who’s domesticated, caught and ate a rabbit in our backyard this morning. I have no idea how she managed to do it.
Imagine dying and people are watching, thinking they’re having a good time.
RE: Fact #19 (1857 Book Challenges Slavery Economics) – When there’s a big difference in wealth between rich and poor people in a society, this is always the case. And when owners have slaves, that’s a huge wealth gap. If a society has only a small wealth gap, everyone is better off. The rich don’t need to live behind walls with guards, and the poor can live decent lives.
RE: Fact #50 (Sleep Deprivation Equals Drunkenness) – It’s a good thing we make doctors work longer than that all the time.
Pilots used to work like that too, but then the FAA realized it’s a terrible idea to have the people flying a plane full of passengers hallucinating. Now, pilots have required rest breaks and layovers.
The doctor who came up with that whole idea was using coke back then.
RE: Fact #9 (Robert Patrick’s Sobriety for T-1000) – That role was gave a seriously cool villain performance. There are a bunch of interesting bits about him being super intense on set. He taught himself to shoot guns without blinking! He was so into his physical training that he actually had to force himself to move slower when he was chasing John through the parking garage on foot, because he was outrunning the dirt bike. It’s great that he’s continued to work as a journeyman actor. He’s had so many roles since T2, maybe nothing massive, but he always stays busy and does a fantastic job.
This training was also so he could run without getting winded, which makes sense since why would a robot be out of breath.
That really stuck with me. Even though he was half Arnold’s size when I was a kid, the way he was like, “I’m just going to run at you, non-stop, no gloating, just pure pursuit,” made him such a scary villain. He’s the kind of character who really shouldn’t come back, because you can only mess up that image.
RE: Fact #37 (Jesse Heiman: The Ultimate Extra) – I worked as an extra for years and saw Jesse on set all the time. There are other extras with similar or even more credits than him, but Jesse’s got a look that’s all his own, which is why he’s so easy to pick out.
RE: Fact #28 (Zero Dark Thirty’s Unauthorized Clip) – Her family asked the filmmakers to apologize at the Academy Awards if the movie won any Oscars. They also wanted the US distributors to donate to charity in Ong’s name and publicly state that her family doesn’t support torture. The movie did win an Oscar for sound editing, but the filmmakers and distributors didn’t follow through with any of the family’s requests.
RE: Fact #48 (Churchill’s Polite Declaration of War) – It’s a bit odd to say “when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor” because Pearl Harbor wasn’t really the reason the UK declared war. Japan attacked British territories all over the Pacific at the same time as part of the same plan.
RE: Fact #32 (Schwarzenegger Keeps Lenin Bust) – Arnold’s not a fan of how California is redrawing district lines.
He’s been fighting against gerrymandering everywhere; it’s been a personal passion of his for years.
RE: Fact #20 (McDonald’s Family Restaurant Legal Battle) – So, McDonald’s Family Restaurant got the rights to use the name in Fairbury, and they could either approve or deny any other McDonald’s franchises wanting to open up there.
I’d deny them all just out of spite. Serves those little sh*ts right.
That’s just good business, not even spite.
RE: Fact #50 (Sleep Deprivation Equals Drunkenness) – This reminds me of that Try Guys series where they checked out what happens when you’re sleep-deprived, drink, use weed, or text while driving.
Mythbusters did that years ago.
RE: Fact #29 (1792 Sugar Boycott Against Slavery) – It’s super interesting how British abolishment happened, mostly because of huge public pressure on the government. The movement was so strong, they actually got more signatures calling for the end of slavery than the total votes cast in the last election. The bill that finally stopped slavery was even a private member’s bill, meaning it didn’t start with the government. People in Britain even started wearing the abolishment symbol everywhere – it was a picture of a Black man in chains with the words, ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’.
Yeah, the zong massacre was a huge turning point. People were so mad that the law basically treated the folks thrown overboard as just property damage.
Basically, the UK went on an ideological mission against slavery and was a major force in ending it worldwide.
Britain used its huge global power to push other countries to stop slavery, even going to war a few times when countries refused. At its peak, a quarter of Britain’s entire naval budget was spent on catching and freeing slave ships.
They legally declared slavers “hostis humani generis,” which means “enemy of mankind.” This meant that regardless of the flag a ship flew, if it was carrying slaves, British ships were required to board it and free the enslaved people.
It really helped abolitionist movements gain momentum and ultimately succeed across the Western world. It’s wild how little this is talked about in the US.
Ending slavery was one of the reasons given for the scramble for Africa.
RE: Fact #17 (NHS Email Storm Disrupts Operations) – So, something similar happened at NYU recently. Apparently, it kicked off because one student emailed the entire faculty. Around 200 faculty members had “out of office” auto-replies set up, and those kept auto-replying to each other over and over. Then, about 1000 people hit “reply all” asking to be taken off the list. It got pretty wild, with people making jokes, one person possibly having a meltdown, and someone even posting a pic of their dog for no reason. It was wild! And even crazier, a bigger glitch happened with students a few months before that.
RE: Fact #40 (Eminem’s Donkey Kong Feat) – Wild how people are still getting way better at a game that’s 44 years old.
Not a huge change, but small score increases to get past someone and keep slowly raising the bar? Yeah.
That’s so true! There was a huge surge of interest in the game right after King of Kong, it really brought it back into the spotlight.
RE: Fact #36 (Avril Lavigne’s YouTube Milestone) – Back in the summer of 2008, when I was just finishing high school and getting ready for university, I probably listened to that song every single day. I even helped push the video to 100 million views by August of that year!
Seriously, what a wild ride it’s been. Us folks who graduated in ’08 have already lived through so much.
I’m a year younger than you, and it’s seriously wild to think about. I remember blasting Paramore and MCR in my room back in the summer of ’07, just waiting to start college. I was staring at that big purple tree by the mailbox, totally wondering what the future held.
It all feels so crystal clear in my mind, like it was only a couple of years ago. But then the thought hits me that a kid born then would actually be older than I was back then. It really feels like a hundred lifetimes ago.
RE: Fact #18 (Matthew Perry’s Sobriety Journey) – If you divide 6,000 by 365, you get about 16.5 years of going to an AA meeting every day. That’s pretty wild.
I’m pretty sure he was in more than one meeting every day for a good part of that time.
RE: Fact #33 (Chicago’s Malört: A Bitter Tradition) – We love to trick tourists into a good old shot of ass in a glass.
If you give someone a shot of Malort for the first time without trying it yourself, you’re kind of a jerk. The idea is to celebrate a new friendship and have a laugh together, not to make fun of them.
So I poured my dad a shot because he’d never had one before, or at least he didn’t think so. The moment he got over it, he was like, “Hey, this is what your brother gave me last time I visited!”
So, I’m from Southern California. I was at this dive bar downstairs in Lincoln Park, and I ordered an IPA with a shot of Malört. All the people who go there all the time were staring at me, but honestly, the Malört actually made the IPA taste better. I think they were bummed out.
If you’re in Chicago, a super easy way to get a free taste of Malort is to just tell everyone you’ve never tried it before.
So, apparently Malort was so disliked, they actually allowed it to be sold during Prohibition because nobody figured anyone would actually drink it to get drunk.
RE: Fact #25 (Saddam’s Cousins’ Fatal Return) – I can’t help but think of that South Park scene where Saddam Hussein says, “It’s alright, buddy, come on home. Nothing to worry about here.”
RE: Fact #41 (Anguilla’s AI Domain Boom) – I never realized .ai was a country domain. I thought it was one of those made-up ones, like .unicorn or something similar.
The .unicorn domain is actually for Unicornistan.
RE: Fact #16 (Statistician Outsmarts Lottery Game) – The whole trick is super simple. Each ticket had eight tic-tac-toe boards, and every single space on those boards—72 in total—had a number from 1 to 39. Some numbers showed up multiple times, like maybe 17 appeared three times and 38 showed up twice. A few numbers were only on the ticket once. What was really smart was realizing you could tell winning tickets from losing ones based on how often each number appeared. Instead of seeing 72 random numbers, the idea was to count how many times each specific number showed up on a particular ticket. The numbers themselves didn’t mean anything, but how often they repeated told you almost everything. The focus was on “singletons”—numbers that only appeared once on the visible boards. It turned out these singletons were almost always repeated under the latex coating. If there were three singletons in a row on one of the eight boards, that ticket was likely a winner.
After figuring out that scamming the lottery wouldn’t be as profitable as his consulting work, Srivastava told the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation about the game’s flaw, and they removed it the next day.
But the tic-tac-toe game wasn’t the only one with a weakness. Srivastava discovered that using a version of his singleton trick at least doubled his chances of picking winners on other similar games, showing that his knack for spotting patterns and probabilities was key to cracking these scratch-off games.
RE: Fact #50 (Sleep Deprivation Equals Drunkenness) – During a military drill called “72-hour defense,” we had three days to set up defensive positions and obstacles. If you slept more than 30 minutes at a time or about six hours total, you had to drive a crew vehicle. By the end, everyone was so exhausted they were hoping their vehicle would break down just so they could finally get some sleep.
As an army medic, I saw a lot of deaths involving vehicles during training, which was really sad.
We had a kid pass out behind a Stryker wheel and get run over out in the field at Fort Bliss. We also had a Humvee flip and kill a lieutenant.
My grandfather fought in the battle of the Hochwald gap and was awake for five days straight because the Germans kept attacking his Sherman tank. He started hallucinating on the third day. Years later, he couldn’t watch the original Star Trek because the transporter effect looked a lot like how the Tiger tanks he was hallucinating would disappear.
I’ve been in a similar situation. My CO and I used to follow tanks and armored personnel carriers around to watch their maneuvers. I was actually hallucinating from exhaustion at one point. Bushes by the road started looking like bodies and skeletons. It was seriously fu*ked up. Plus, I had just read “A Clockwork Orange,” so the narrator’s quotes were playing on repeat in my head.
Driving my LT with a CVC helmet at night with dual-eye night vision felt like a sensory deprivation chamber, especially when I was driving a 113. It was fu*king brutal.
RE: Fact #36 (Avril Lavigne’s YouTube Milestone) – Back in the day, when it actually mattered, it also got removed from the Top Viewed page. Apparently, fans were using scripts to artificially boost the video’s views and score.
Remember the old YouTube gaming days? Back when Google had to totally change their algorithm because of “reply girls” who used their cleavage and the video titles to get more views and followers.
It’s also when they changed how long a video needed to be watched to count as a “view.” That was around the time the evolution of dance video hit 100 million views.
RE: Fact #16 (Statistician Outsmarts Lottery Game) – When I was a teenager working at a fast-food place during a giveaway, I figured out how they printed the peel-off cards. The winning ones were cut from the edge of the roll, so I could tell which ones were likely winners. It wasn’t a guarantee, but my “picks” were right about 80% of the time. I never ended up giving away a huge winner, though – maybe those were printed at a different point in the run, or they were just so rare I never saw one. My regular customers loved it because I’d make sure to pick out the good cards for them.
RE: Fact #9 (Robert Patrick’s Sobriety for T-1000) – Patrick was a house painter until a boating accident on Lake Erie in 1984. He’s a hero for swimming for three hours to save others during the accident, even though he almost drowned himself. After all that, he moved to Los Angeles when he was 26.
His little brother actually started and is the lead singer of the band Filter.
And Filter’s song “Hey Man Nice Shot” was recorded in their parents’ basement.
RE: Fact #13 (Andersen’s Odd Request at Dickens’ Home) – At that time, Dickens’ oldest son was 19, and Anderson was 51.
Is that a real custom in Denmark, or not?
The Dickeneses were totally over Andersen by the end of his visit; he just wouldn’t leave. He was probably way safer getting shaved by someone professional instead of a resentful teenager who’d been stuck with this creepy, boring guy for a whole month.
RE: Fact #27 (Ronnie James Dio’s Mic Mishap) – I learned years ago that Dio sang on a Christian Rock album. The songs are by Kansas member Kerry Livgren, specifically “Mask of the Great Deceiver” and “To Live for the King.”
This makes sense. He’s known for popularizing the devil horns hand gesture 🤘🤘, but he actually learned it from his Italian grandmother, who used it to ward off the evil eye.
RE: Fact #12 (19th-Century Work-Life Balance Pioneer) – Seriously, I’m always trying to track down where my eight hours of downtime vanishes. Like, sleep, work, hit the gym, grab some food, annnnndddd it’s already time for bed.
An eight-hour workday isn’t really an eight-hour workday. My commute is about an hour and fifteen minutes total each day, which is longer than some, but I don’t think it’s crazy. Here’s what my typical workday looks like:
I wake up between 6:30 and 6:45 AM, get ready, and leave by 7:20 AM so I can be at my desk and logged in by 8 AM. Work is from 8 AM to 5 PM. I get an hour for lunch, and I don’t work through it, but I don’t really count that as free time since I’m still in the office and have to be back at my desk within the hour.
If I leave right at 5 PM, with traffic, I’m usually home around 5:45 or 5:50 PM. But I usually don’t leave right at 5, more like 5:15 PM, and get home around 6 PM. So, my eight hours of work actually turn into a day that’s more like 6:30 AM to 6 PM. I personally need eight hours of sleep, so I’m usually in bed by 10:30 PM. That leaves me with about four hours of “free” time, and most of that is just spent recovering mentally and getting ready for the next day.
The traditional 9-to-5 workday is where that saying comes from. For some reason, lunch breaks aren’t paid anymore.
RE: Fact #14 (First Autism Diagnosis: Donald Triplett) – Autism has always existed; people just used to say it was “being weird” instead.
My grandpa used to say, “We didn’t have autism when I was a kid.” Then he’d talk about Dave, who had 500 miles of model train tracks in his basement with a whole tiny town built around them. He’d say, “So what if Dave can name every train that’s passed through town in the last 27 years? There’s nothing wrong with that.”
RE: Fact #43 (Tragic Selfie with a Walrus) – It was likely just playful behavior. If the walrus was playing with the visitor and then saw its “closest human friend” jump into the water, it’s not hard to imagine the walrus thinking something like, “Great, he wants to play too!”
Whether it’s playful or not, a walrus is going to be a walrus. If that means they accidentally kill you, well, that’s the exhibit. It’s an unfortunate accident, but it still happened.
RE: Fact #37 (Jesse Heiman: The Ultimate Extra) – I totally remember seeing this guy on an MTV reality show ages ago, like in the early 2000s. I think it was about a nerdy guy dating a model or something? Anyway, it felt like he popped up everywhere after that.
RE: Fact #2 (Flat Earthers’ Antarctic Revelation) – The bigger flat Earth groups have mostly said the results were fake and accused everyone involved, even other flat Earthers, of faking the trip. They think it’s all a big plot to push the idea that the Earth is round. A “conspiracy to promote the spherical Earth model”? Seriously? Why would anyone bother with that? Are they trying to support “Big Globe” or something?
RE: Fact #22 (Leo Gao’s $10 Million Escape) – Just a reminder to myself to set up deposit notifications.
This just adds to the reasons I feel down when payday rolls around.
Seeing that after-tax number is pretty rough.
RE: Fact #10 (Cultural Differences in Conversation Pauses) – Bulgarian speakers are just happy when you speak their language.
My friend went to Portugal recently, and she said the exact same thing when she got back! Apparently, the locals were super happy she was even trying to speak their language.
And French speakers are kinda annoyed that you’re speaking their language.
This is why it’s a dead language in Futurama.
RE: Fact #42 (Lamberto Maggiorani’s Real-Life Struggle) – Wow, that movie was already the most depressing thing I’d ever seen, and somehow you managed to make it even more of a downer.
RE: Fact #35 (Man Trapped on Ship for Years) – The sailor was freed and flown back to Syria.
When he found out he was the legal guardian of the ship, he should have had the court assign him a lawyer to sell it for next to nothing. He probably would have made a fortune. “Look at me. I am the captain now!”
He was the guardian, not the owner. Guardians can’t sell the ship, they just maintain and guard it.
If it’s scrap, nobody wants it. Just the towing fees alone are pricey.
RE: Fact #21 (Norland College: Elite Nanny Training) – If you can swing the cost of one of these nannies, it sounds like your kids might be valuable enough to fetch a big ransom. So, pretty much, you’re getting a security guard and a surrogate mom rolled into one. This person could be feeding your kids pureed peas airplane-style with one hand and then taking down an intruder with the other. “Shhh, he was all tuckered out and just needed a nap.”
It’s likely the nanny is on a team that also has security, so they’re being trained to be the final defense in emergencies, or the first to respond if backup from trained bodyguards is coming quickly.
If you can afford a nanny like that, you probably also have a personal assistant and a couple of doormen keeping an eye on the house. The nanny is just one piece of the whole setup, not something you have on its own.
RE: Fact #48 (Churchill’s Polite Declaration of War) – So, basically, Churchill told the Japanese Ambassador that the UK was at war with Japan. He explained that Japan attacked Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong without any warning or declaration of war. Churchill said these were unprovoked aggressive acts that broke international law, specifically the Hague Convention. That’s why the UK’s ambassador in Tokyo was told to let the Japanese government know that a state of war now existed.
RE: Fact #25 (Saddam’s Cousins’ Fatal Return) – “Dead inside 3 days” really doesn’t capture the full story. They were hiding out in a house, but instead of police or the army, it was a tribal hit squad surrounding them. Saddam had a van full of guns and ammo sent over so they could defend themselves. After a 13-hour shootout, one brother was killed. The other stumbled out the front door, injured, yelled his name to the sky, and was then shot down.
So, it sounds like they got a pardon under Iraqi law, but their own tribal laws still found them guilty.
Man, talk about a rough gig! If you were in Saddam’s pet militia, imagine how frustrating that must have been. You’ve got these guys cornered, probably just with some basic weapons, and then your boss tells you to hand over a bunch of guns so they can take a shot at you… for kicks. That’s wild.
Some of them probably just love fighting and killing, no matter the reason. Just think about them.
So I was imagining being locked in a basement and slowly tortured to death. By dictator standards, letting someone go out fighting is actually pretty nice.
Hussein Kamel was Saddam’s right-hand man and his most trusted second-in-command. Saddam really treated him like a son in a lot of ways.
RE: Fact #8 (Japanese Wives Manage Finances) – My grandparents had plaques in their kitchen that listed ‘chores of the man/woman.’ One of the man’s chores was to hand over the money.
Lots of stories about wives waiting outside factories on payday to grab their husbands as soon as they left work. They did this to stop the husbands from going to the pub and spending all their money.
Bingo. This wasn’t really about wives being controlling or gold diggers, but more about making sure the money for the week didn’t get gambled away or spent on drinks.
That was pretty common in the UK too. There’s a great British Pathé or BBC video of it happening in the 60s or 70s, but I can’t find it for the life of me.
RE: Fact #48 (Churchill’s Polite Declaration of War) – Being tactful means you can send someone to hell so nicely they’re actually excited about the trip.
RE: Fact #31 (Octavian Orders Caesarion’s Death) – Octavian took control of Alexandria on August 1, 30 BC, which is when Egypt officially became part of the Roman Republic. Mark Antony and Cleopatra died around then, and it’s generally believed they took their own lives.
Octavian might have briefly thought about letting Caesarion take over Egypt after his mother, but it’s thought that Caesarion was executed in Alexandria in late August, maybe on August 29, 30 BC. This happened after his advisor, Arius Didymus, apparently said, “Too many Caesars is not good.”
Not much information survives about how Caesarion died. After that, Octavian took complete control of Egypt.
Yeah, those anglicized Roman names always sound pretty silly, especially when they’re next to ones that weren’t changed, like Augustus or Julius Caesar. “Mark Antony” really could be some guy you meet today in Britain or America. Shouldn’t we be using their actual names, like Marcus Antonius in this case?
I’ve always heard the quote as “two Caesars are one too many.”
I thought the saying was that you have to break a few eggs to make a Caesar salad.
RE: Fact #30 (“Where’s the Beef?” Controversy) – As I recall, she knew that was probably going to happen, but I think her pay wasn’t that great, and Prego offered her a lot of money to do their ad.
And it’s pretty obvious that Wendy’s itself admitted they had their beef with Prego.
RE: Fact #46 (High Casualty Rate for Flamethrower Units) – When you’re in a combat situation, the key to survival is staying hidden and keeping a low profile. In a real-life version of Call of Duty, this would mean spending a lot of time looking at the ground, staying low, using cover, and blending in. Basically, you’d want to “hug the ground and keep your head down.”
Now, using a flamethrower is the opposite of that. You generally have to be at least a foot off the ground, either kneeling or standing. Plus, it shoots a big, bright orange or yellow beam that instantly tells the enemy exactly where you are. It’s also awkward, hard to crawl with, and adds another foot of height even when you’re trying to lie down.
And it makes you wear this big backpack. If that thing catches fire, everyone close by is in trouble too.
It’s actually pretty bulletproof, and the whole exploding thing is just a movie myth.
RE: Fact #20 (McDonald’s Family Restaurant Legal Battle) – This is close to where I grew up. Kind of a similar thing happened near my old hometown in Mattoon, IL, with a Burger King. The big Burger King tried to sue the smaller one there, even though the small one had been there way longer. It’s the same deal – they can’t open any new Burger Kings within like a 30-minute drive or something.
So, in Australia, all the Burger Kings are actually called Hungry Jack’s. They’re basically the same, though. Back in the 70s when they first came to Australia, there was already a local place with the Burger King name and they had the trademark. I guess when that trademark ran out, they figured it was better to just keep the Hungry Jack’s name since everyone already knew it.
It’s a bit more involved than that. When the Burger King trademark expired, Burger King attempted to buy out Hungry Jack’s, but they weren’t allowed to. Burger King then began establishing their own restaurants in Australia and blocked Hungry Jack’s from opening new spots. Afterward, they sued Hungry Jack’s for failing to open enough new locations. Burger King ended up losing that lawsuit and eventually sold their Australian restaurants to their New Zealand franchisee. That franchisee later sold them to Hungry Jack’s, and those restaurants were then rebranded as Hungry Jack’s.
RE: Fact #14 (First Autism Diagnosis: Donald Triplett) – My mother’s cousin was autistic and born in the early 1930s. She wasn’t diagnosed until she was an adult. She was also an autistic savant. A newspaper even wrote about her when she was a kid, saying she was an amazing piano player who’d never had a lesson. She could play any song after hearing it just once, though she did have a disability. She went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes with her family around 1950, and on the way back, she correctly called out the names of tons of train stations before they arrived. My aunt remembers she lacked social skills and would knock the hats off her mother’s friends when they visited, to the point where her mother stopped having guests over.
Sadly, she was sent to an asylum when she was about 17 after she choked my aunt unconscious. My aunt was around 10 at the time and said the cousin wasn’t being aggressive, she just thought it was a game. I worried she might have been forgotten, which happened to many people back then, but thankfully that wasn’t the case. Her sister moved to England and brought her along. She lived in a nearby home and was visited every day.
That’s lovely, thanks for sharing.
My great uncle was a lot like that. He had infantile schizophrenia and was a mechanical genius, but had a really bad breakdown in his late teens. Doctors convinced my great grandparents to let them perform a lobotomy on him, and he was never able to live on his own after that.
Schizophrenia in children sounds really awful. I had no idea that was possible. It sounds like your uncle had a very tough and sad life.
RE: Fact #15 (Roddenberry’s Stand Against Racism) – Imagine 1860s Mississippi, but without any Black people. That’s a pretty wild sci-fi idea.
Seriously, I’m wondering what they were thinking with this premise. Like, okay, the show is set in the deep South before the Civil War, but they’re just going to ignore slavery, even though that was the whole reason for the war? It’s wild.
Most folks in Mississippi back then were enslaved.
I think they were just trying to make some racist propaganda about “Southern hospitality.”
This makes me think of that story about the guy who was the only Black person at his company. He dressed in a costume that fit the theme for some company retreat in the South.
RE: Fact #24 (Freddie Mercury’s Unique Vocal Gift) – Yeah, I remember reading something similar about Elton John being a bit self-conscious about his teeth, but he was worried that getting dental work done might change his voice. It’s a pretty understandable concern when your voice is literally your career and what you love doing.
Elton had throat surgery which deepened his voice, but he actually seemed to like his new voice and all the new sounds he could create.
He sang “Candle In The Wind” as his last song before throat surgery because he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to sing again. That’s my favorite version of it.
As you get older, your look really settles in. I’ve got this noticeable mole on my face that most would say isn’t attractive, but sometimes when I meet new people, they mention it. And every time, they tell me to keep it on. It’s strange, but I think people are drawn to distinctive features if the person’s personality is strong enough.
I totally get what you mean, I removed a mole too. Everyone who told me not to ended up saying it looked way better after I did it. My gut feeling was right on this one. But hey, whatever floats your boat!
I don’t think it’s unwarranted. I had my wisdom teeth out in my 30s and lost the ability to whistle. I can do it again now, but it’s not as good as it used to be.
I lost a good bit of my whistling ability a few years back, right around the time I had three wisdom teeth removed. I never actually thought to connect those two things, but it totally makes sense now. I have to kind of position my jaw and cheeks differently to make a sound.
RE: Fact #1 (Marines Outsmart AI Surveillance) – The AI saw those two Marines doing somersaults for 300 meters and just figured they were clowns with nothing worth mentioning.
This makes me think of the Air France Flight 447 crash. On that flight, an Airbus A-330 got into such a bad stall that the computer systems stopped giving warnings because they thought the data was wrong. The speed sensors had frozen over, so the pilots didn’t know how the plane was actually doing. They pulled up so much that the plane stalled badly and dropped straight down. Even when the speed sensors started working again, neither the pilots nor the plane’s computers could believe they were barely moving forward while upright and falling fast. One pilot even thought they were going too fast. In that situation, it happened because humans programmed the system with their own assumptions. A trained AI could develop similar blind spots if humans don’t provide data for very unlikely scenarios. It’s like how military object identification might have very little footage of things somersaulting, or only have civilian footage to show the AI what *not* to flag as a military target.
The idea is that if the copilot had just done nothing, the plane would have recovered. But he kept pulling back on the controls, even when he said he wasn’t. No programmer or systems designer would ever expect pilots to be that incompetent. Knowing the stall conditions of the plane you’re flying is super important, like, one of the most crucial things you learn.
Yeah, I bet there’s not much footage of somersaulting in military object identification data.
If I saw someone doing a 300-meter somersault, I wouldn’t assume they were human either.
This makes me think of those “I’m a park ranger” type stories where they talk about some human-like thing that moves through the woods by cartwheeling backward.
RE: Fact #47 (Airlines Thrive on Loyalty Programs) – Yeah, the reason they want you to use a carry-on instead of checking a bag is so they can sell the space underneath to freight companies.
I work with air freight forwarders, and yeah, it’s a really profitable business.
So, an airline “lost” my bag, and then someone from customer service told me they sometimes put bags on later flights to make room for cargo. I ended up getting a small reimbursement from them to buy some clothes since I had nothing until my bag arrived two days later. It’s only happened once in hundreds of flights, but I was totally stunned.
So, didn’t the rail companies decide cargo was way more profitable and basically made the government take over passenger service to avoid shutting it down entirely? Are we heading for a repeat of what happened with AmAir?
RE: Fact #19 (1857 Book Challenges Slavery Economics) – Historian George M. Fredrickson said that The Impending Crisis might be the most politically impactful book ever published in the US. He believes it fueled the sectional conflict leading up to the Civil War even more than Uncle Tom’s Cabin did, because it was the only American book to spark a long and heated debate in Congress.
A summary of the book points out that the South wasn’t doing well economically, even with slavery. For example, Massachusetts produced 16 bushels of wheat per acre, while Virginia produced only 7. Iowa produced 36 bushels of oats per acre, but Mississippi only produced 12. In 1790, New York had a population of 340,000 compared to Virginia’s 748,000. By 1850, New York’s population had grown to 3,097,000, while Virginia’s was 1,421,000. Land in the North also sold for much more than land in the South. The book includes many similar statistics.
This book faced a lot of opposition. Owning a copy was a crime in most of the South, and distributors were arrested. Three men in Arkansas were even hanged for having it.
When Congress met in December 1859, the House of Representatives couldn’t do any business until February 1860 because they were so divided over electing a speaker. Helper’s book was the only thing they discussed. During this intense and bitter election for Speaker of the House, which was one of the longest in congressional history, Southern politicians refused to vote for anyone who supported Helper’s book.
RE: Fact #45 (Pinkerton Agents Retrieve Magic Cards) – Pinkertons aren’t like the police; they’re private security. So, first, you tell them to get off your property, and then you call actual cops to deal with them.
The fact that they sent Pinkertons instead of actual police is a big clue that they’re the ones in the wrong here. You call the cops when you have a legitimate reason, but you bring in hired muscle when you’re trying to push someone around.
I was wondering about the legality of this too! It’s not the buyers’ fault if a company messes up and releases something early.
At worst, someone involved in making it might get fired.
But can a company really sue someone for, like, a home invasion because of their own screw-up? And couldn’t the person win that lawsuit?
It really depends on where you are. A lot of states and countries let the buyer decide if they want to keep something. And if you tell Pinkerton to leave, they have to go, or you can call the cops on them for trespassing.
RE: Fact #18 (Matthew Perry’s Sobriety Journey) – I’m on season 4 of watching Friends. The people who suggested it told me to pay attention to Matthew Perry’s appearance to see what he was going through off-set. They said a goatee and being thin meant he was using pills or pain meds, and looking bloated meant he was drinking. It’s really sad to see that kind of change happen on camera, away from the actual show moments.
Him in Serving Sara is also a performance worth studying. He was drunk throughout the entire production, slurring his lines, and had to be pieced together in editing with ADR. His autobiography is fantastic; he reads the audiobook on Spotify and it’s heartbreaking as he shares his struggles. He specifically blames himself for Hurley’s failed film career and tried to make up for it during the press tour, but it didn’t work out in the end.
RE: Fact #5 (Parkland Hero Controls Shooter’s Rights) – My cousin was murdered by a wealthy person. His parents are owed around $30 million because of it. But even after thirty years, the murderer still has no personal assets of his own.
That’s what Alex Jones was going for in his trials.
RE: Fact #30 (“Where’s the Beef?” Controversy) – When that Prego ad dropped, I figured Wendy’s and Prego were part of the same big company, kind of like Taco Bell and Doritos these days. I thought it was like a spin-off ad.
Honestly, I’m surprised her agent didn’t see that as a conflict of interest.
I’ve always figured everyone in the film industry was on cocaine back in the 80s, so maybe that explains this too?
So, have you checked out those leaked Sony emails? And have you heard Kevin Smith’s story about Barbra Streisand’s old hairdresser who’s apparently still making all the Superman movies? Plus, did you see what WB was expecting for Mickey 17? It’s all still pretty wild.
It seems like almost everyone did cocaine in the 80s, except for my grandma. Everyone I’ve asked has fessed up to it, but not her. I can’t help but wonder if she was just a real square back then, or maybe she did it and just doesn’t want to admit it.
You know, I checked it out on YouTube, and it really feels like Wendy’s could have had a strong case to sue Prego if they’d chosen to. The whole campaign, from the character to her build, is almost identical.
Sometimes, the smartest move is to just let things go. But, hey, it was the 80s, and a lot of coke was probably being done. Lots of ego involved back then.
RE: Fact #4 (ADHD and Intrusive Sleep Explained) – I didn’t know about this symptom, and it really explains a lot for me.
RE: Fact #3 (Weird Al and Prince’s Encounter) – Weird Al should have worn those glasses they give out at gorilla exhibits, the ones where you look away.
RE: Fact #39 (Maguire and Gyllenhaal’s Spider-Man Drama) – It sound like Tobey was just faking it.
Since he got a big salary boost with this, I’ve always figured he was just exaggerating a real issue, not completely making it up.
Maybe he was thinking, “Alright, it’s actually worth it to fu*k up my back more for 25 million.”
RE: Fact #32 (Schwarzenegger Keeps Lenin Bust) – I can totally picture Rainier Wolfcastle doing that.
He was elected to lead, not to read.
RE: Fact #29 (1792 Sugar Boycott Against Slavery) – Even though it cost them their jobs, the mill workers in Manchester stood with the Union during the Civil War by not working with cotton from the Confederacy, which was picked by enslaved people. Abraham Lincoln even recognized their support, and there’s a statue of him there to prove it.
Liverpool was the last to surrender for the Confederacy.
A key part of Abraham Lincoln’s foreign policy was making sure the war was presented in a certain way, especially to the UK. He knew that if Britain saw the war as being about slavery, it would be really hard for their government to get involved.
Lincoln was so focused on this that he sent tons of free flour to people in Britain, with big black letters on the barrels saying “the war is about slavery.” Of course, the war *was* about slavery, but back in the 1800s, with a whole ocean between them, that point could easily get lost. This was especially true since the Confederacy was also heavily lobbying Britain to make sure the war *wasn’t* seen as being about slavery.
RE: Fact #25 (Saddam’s Cousins’ Fatal Return) – Wait, his cousins married his daughters? Whoa.
cousin marriage is pretty common in the Middle East.
It’s normal in the Middle East and in a lot of Muslim countries. In Pakistan, for example, most people marry and have kids with their cousins. It’s pretty common there, with about two-thirds of the population doing it.
Totally a thing in tribal societies.
RE: Fact #47 (Airlines Thrive on Loyalty Programs) – This is how airlines have sort of become like banks without making a big deal about it.
So basically, these are finance companies that also happen to fly people around. It feels like that’s how most industries in America are these days. I recall reading that car companies actually make most of their money from financing car sales, not from selling the cars themselves. It really seems like hardly any company makes money doing what they say they’re in business for. It’s all about credit and loans, which makes sense as a result of financialization.
RE: Fact #27 (Ronnie James Dio’s Mic Mishap) – The movie quote talks about using really good mics at John King’s studio, and how the singer’s voice was so powerful it was distorting the sound.
He made the mic clip, but the fact says it got destroyed. There’s a huge difference between something like “shredded the capsule to pieces with raw vocal power” and just “being so loud the recording was a little distorted.”
Audio engineers can hear stuff that regular folks wouldn’t. We were recording drums live once, and the engineer paused and said a cymbal was cracked. We checked it all over and couldn’t find anything. Then, during the next session, a visible crack actually showed up. I wouldn’t be shocked if it messed up the mic, but only for the engineer and nobody else.
RE: Fact #45 (Pinkerton Agents Retrieve Magic Cards) – So, Wizards confirmed to Polygon that the Pinkertons were brought in for this whole thing. The guy who presented on oldschoolmtg mentioned that the agents were like “heavy hitter types” and really scared his wife. Apparently, the Pinkertons had Wizards of the Coast’s contact info, and after talking to someone there, the presenter decided to take down his videos.
He shared in his video that the agent was really sorry for making his wife cry that morning by sending these serious lawmen to grab stuff and talk about stolen products and jail. But, he added, they don’t think anyone actually stole anything (and they didn’t). He’s not sure if the company believes anyone really stole anything or if it was just a mix-up, but they wanted the product back to figure out where things went wrong.
The whole situation is pretty wild considering the Magic expansion, March of the Machine: The Aftermath, was meant to be revealed later. This presenter, Cannon, somehow got his hands on some booster packs and showed them off on his YouTube channel, revealing about 75% of the set before it was officially out.
Within a week, Cannon said Pinkerton agents showed up at his door demanding he hand over all the cards from the unreleased set. He had posted videos on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and the agents arrived on Saturday morning.
Cannon explained to io9 that he thinks he got these cards due to a distribution mistake. He also said he wasn’t aware of any rules against revealing the cards early, as other YouTubers often open boxes ahead of time and are allowed to show the cards. He claims he bought the cards for around $4,000, thinking they were from an already-released set called March of Machines, and at no point was he given any restrictions.
This isn’t the first time the Pinkertons have been sent to get Magic: The Gathering cards back. People who wished to remain anonymous for fear of backlash from Wizards of the Coast told io9 that back in 2017, Pinkerton employees were sent to look into the theft of an uncut sheet of foil cards from a major expansion called Ixalan that was about to be released.
RE: Fact #34 (Tom Petty Fights Album Pricing) – Music is likely the only real magic I’ve ever experienced. It’s not some trick; it’s pure and genuine. It has the power to move, heal, and communicate in incredible ways.
Music really sticks with you, you know? It’s what helps us get through everything, good times and bad.
RE: Fact #22 (Leo Gao’s $10 Million Escape) – The court figures he still has the $6.7 million that Gao moved out of his account, especially since he hasn’t said what happened to it. They think he’ll still have access to it after he gets out of prison. So, there’s a pretty good chance the bank might keep an eye on him when he’s released to try and get their money back. One expert thinks it would have been better for the bank to have him pay restitution during sentencing rather than trying to go after him with a costly lawsuit later. It’s interesting that another person got sentenced to home detention and had to pay back about NZ$11,800.
So, the bank got back about $3 million pretty quickly after they found out Gao had moved $6.7 million out of his account. It’s funny, because if I send 5,000 euros to my girlfriend’s account, we both get calls from the bank asking what we’re doing with the money.
Casino, or rather, the money itself, seems to have been laundered pretty thoroughly. I’m guessing they didn’t put a ton of effort into making it look less obvious.
It kinda feels like they just moved the money to a Chinese bank account, then took a trip to Macao and said “oops, lost it all gambling,” and that would be enough to get by.
I knew a guy who won a big lottery prize, like, in the high eight figures. He ended up gambling it all away. Seriously. The last time I saw him, he was back to square one, just like when I first met him: broke, struggling with drugs, and playing the lowest stakes blackjack at the table.
RE: Fact #31 (Octavian Orders Caesarion’s Death) – I used to wonder why people acted like such jerks. Then I played this game, I think it was Crusader Kings, where to keep playing, you had to murder your own sons or sons of other people, and marry your family into really terrible families.
Dealing with land splitting was a real pain if you died with too many sons, but you needed a lot of sons just in case some died. It turns out, when you’re a king, your main options are pretty much to kill and marry in the most calculated ways, or get killed yourself.
So, the idea is to have a lot of kids because those good traits are rare, and you need plenty of daughters to set up marriages that pass down claims to your dynasty. The downside is you end up with too many sons. If my heir is a real stinker, I’ll send him alone to a place with a plague and hope he catches it.
Yeah, a lot of bad stuff in the world can be explained by the idea that people think, “If I don’t do this bad thing, then I’ll die or someone worse will take over.”
You could always just give younger sons a job in the church.
If a family is really powerful, like royalty, the older sibling might be in more danger of being assassinated by people who want power through the younger sibling.
RE: Fact #49 (Parents’ Favorite Child Revealed) – My mom told me she had a favorite child, but wouldn’t say who it was. That messed me up for a bit.
RE: Fact #38 (Wells Fargo Employee’s Tragic Death) – So, this actually happened in my building ages ago. A guy came in on Thursday, died at his desk, nobody noticed all day Friday, and they only found him on Monday.
My coworker pulled me aside one evening and kindly but firmly told me to take a few days off to recover. She was genuinely worried I was going to die. I really needed to hear that because I hadn’t realized how bad I looked until she said something. I stayed home and did some light duties while still checking work emails. I don’t think I was on death’s door, but I wouldn’t want to work with someone in that condition. I was embarrassed thinking about the example I was setting. I wish I could say jobs aren’t worth it, but that’s too simple. I was fortunate not to be punished for taking paid time off. If you have that option, use it!
It’s like in a corporate office – they just find someone else to fill the role.
Take the cleaning fees out of his last paycheck.
Seriously, people always say that, but does anyone expect companies to just keep a dead employee’s job open indefinitely?
RE: Fact #46 (High Casualty Rate for Flamethrower Units) – Hey, if you ever get a chance to check out the WWII museum in New Orleans, they have this cool virtual interview room on the first floor where you can “talk” to a flamethrower operator. It was pretty wild hearing how they actually learned to use them.
Apparently, when they got them, there were no instructions, just what kind of fuel to use. They ended up messing around with it and using airplane fuel instead of what they were supposed to. They also tested shooting one to see how safe it was for the person operating it.
This guy mentioned learning to shoot it in really windy conditions. They’d fire it just in front of themselves at the ground and then push that fireball forward. He said he was on Iwo Jima when he used it. He also shared his first kills – he shot into a pillbox’s gun slit and took out seven Japanese soldiers.
You can literally sit there for hours and ask these WWII vets about almost anything, and they answer on video. It’s a really awesome place to visit.
That museum was one of the coolest things I found when I visited New Orleans. It was really big and super well-organized.
RE: Fact #3 (Weird Al and Prince’s Encounter) – So my wife used to be a flight attendant, and Prince was on one of her flights in first class. When she went to take drink orders, he just blew her off. His handler then told her, “You don’t talk to Prince, you talk to me and I’ll pass it along.” Honestly, I’m not surprised by this story at all.
It’s good Prince doesn’t need to talk to anyone anymore. It seemed like a hassle for him when he was alive.
RE: Fact #23 (Cybersecurity Minister Without Computer Skills) – Yeah, it’s wild when you see people in top spots at companies who don’t seem qualified. Like, at my old job, the head of IT actually studied ceramics!
Seriously, what you studied in college doesn’t matter all that much if you’ve got the right experience and certifications in your industry. My own degrees aren’t really related to my current job, but I’ve been doing this for 20 years. What I learned back in 2003 just isn’t that useful anymore.