1 Kathryn Jones’s Lost Jackpot
In November 2012, a Canadian woman named Kathryn Jones bought a Lotto Max ticket in Ontario, then lost it and forgot about it. After the ticket went unclaimed, Ontario Lottery and Gaming investigators traced her through credit card proof of purchase, store surveillance footage, and in-person interviews to confirm that she had bought the winning ticket. Officials showed up at her door in 2013 and told her she had won the $50 million jackpot. Jones learned the news just 48 hours before the filing deadline.
2. As of April 2026, basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal had a net worth of $400 million, had developed major skyscrapers in Newark, New Jersey, and had once been a minority owner of the Sacramento Kings. He also owns 150 car washes, 40 health clubs, a movie theater in Newark, and the Big Chicken restaurant brand.
3. Cambodian OB-GYN Haing S. Ngor survived the Khmer Rouge after 1975 by hiding his medical education, his professional skills, and even the fact that he wore glasses because the regime targeted intellectuals and professionals. In 1978, after the Khmer Rouge expelled him from Phnom Penh and sent him to a rice farm, his wife, Chang My-Huoy, went into labor and needed a cesarean section. Ngor knew how to perform the operation, but doing so would have exposed his training and could have gotten his entire family killed. His wife and their unborn child died during labor, and Ngor later escaped Cambodia, moved to the United States in 1980, and eventually won an Academy Award for starring in The Killing Fields in 1984.
4. After the rock band Green Day finished recording an album called Cigarettes and Valentines in 2003, someone stole the master tapes from the band’s studio. The band could have rebuilt the record from backups, but bassist Mike Dirnt later said it did not feel the same as the originals. They instead chased a new batch of songs they thought were stronger. That decision led directly to American Idiot, the 2004 rock opera that became one of the biggest albums of their career.
5. In 1891, a boy named Jesse Livermore ran away from home with his mother’s blessing after his father pulled him out of school, and he started working in Boston posting stock quotes for $5 a week. By age 15, he had already made his first market profit, and over the next decades he built a reputation for reading price movements so well that he became one of Wall Street’s most famous speculators. After World War I, Livermore secretly cornered the U.S. cotton market, and President Woodrow Wilson summoned him to the White House after the Secretary of Agriculture warned that the move could drive prices dangerously higher. Livermore agreed to unwind the position at break-even, and years later, during the 1929 crash, he made about $100 million, even though he eventually lost that fortune and died with debts greater than his assets.
6 Blood River Lake Disaster
During filming for The Pirates of Blood River in 1961, the stunt professionals refused to perform a scene that required the pirate actors to wade through a lake. Director John Gilling pushed ahead anyway, so the actors did the scene themselves. Christopher Lee later said Michael Ripper nearly drowned, that he survived only because his 6-foot-4 height kept him above the water, and that Oliver Reed ended up hospitalized with an eye infection.
7. On September 17, 2024, an 18-year-old man named Sam Dutcher was driving a 2022 Honda Pilot in North Dakota when the car malfunctioned and began accelerating on its own. Dutcher tried to shut the vehicle off, brake, and use the emergency brake, but nothing worked, and the Honda hit 113 mph as it carried him across state lines into Minnesota during a terrifying 20-minute drive. Deputies and troopers stayed on the phone with him, tried other ways to stop the SUV, and finally decided on a controlled collision before the road ended at a dead end. A Minnesota State Trooper got in front of the Honda; Dutcher struck the rear of the patrol car on purpose, and the maneuver brought both vehicles to a safe stop without serious injuries.
8. In 1786, American inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter warning a friend about the hazards of lead and lead paint. His warning came at a time when white lead paint was still widely used, even though the dangers were already known to some people. The United States did not ban lead in household paint until 1978, almost 200 years later.
9. By 2017, independent console repair shops were warning that the PlayStation 4 had become a favorite hiding place for cockroaches. Repair technicians found that the PS4’s wider ventilation grates, low vent placement, and hotter internal power supply made it easier for roaches to get inside and nest than in other consoles. Repairmen claimed that at least half of the PS4s they received were loaded with roaches.
10. In 1833, a Swedish milk vendor named Pilt Carin Ersdotter arrived in Stockholm and began selling milk after being judged too weak for boat work. Her looks drew such huge crowds that people reportedly gathered just to stare at her, and one day the crush became so large that she had to flee into a nearby house. Authorities then arrested her for creating a traffic obstruction and for having “blocked the street with her beauty.” Aristocratic families later paid to display her in their homes.
11 Meth Overdose Hit 113
According to a 2007 case report, a 23-year-old man swallowed what he later estimated were 100 dose units of methamphetamine, at least 1 gram each, after a car crash because he feared police would arrest him for drug possession. He then fled on foot, fought with officers, and arrived at the hospital severely agitated, where doctors recorded a core body temperature of 45°C, or 113°F, after intubation. This was the highest reported core temperature in a case with laboratory confirmation of psychostimulant drug exposure. Despite the overdose, hyperthermia, and rhabdomyolysis, he survived and was discharged from the hospital five days later.
12. In 1941, Lieutenant General Ben Lear was playing golf at a country club in Tennessee when a convoy of 80 U.S. Army trucks carrying 350 men from the 110th Regiment rolled past. Lear heard soldiers whistle and shout catcalls, particularly “yoo-hoo,” at a group of women in shorts. He stopped the convoy and declared that the men had disgraced the army. As punishment, he ordered every man in the convoy to march 15 miles of the 45-mile trip back in brutal 97°F heat, and many straggled or collapsed along the way. The incident sparked public criticism, but the Army backed Lear, and the mocking nickname “Yoo-Hoo” stayed with him for the rest of his career.
13. During the reign of Roman emperor Claudius in the first century AD, cheap taverns and food stalls gave ordinary Romans, people in lower classes, to gather, drink, and eat hot meals. Claudius saw them as a problem for public order, so he abolished them as a means of social control. He also ordered that no boiled meat or hot water be sold, and he punished people who ignored the ban.
14. In the United States, official protein guidance sets the recommended daily intake at 46 grams for an adult woman and 56 grams for an adult man, based on 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight, or about 0.36 grams per pound. Athletes often need more, with suggested intakes rising up to 1.4 to 1.8 g/kg. Even so, an average person in the U.S.A. today consumes more protein than the basic recommendation, at about 69.8 grams a day for women and 98.3 grams for men.
15. In April 2023, a group of professional gamblers led by Bernard Marantelli and backed by financier Zeljko Ranogajec targeted a $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot by trying to cover nearly every possible number combination in the game. Over the three days between drawings, the operation printed about 25.8 million tickets at four locations across Texas, enough to cover roughly 99 percent of the 26 million possible combinations. They won and took the $57.8 million cash option instead of the full jackpot, and they made a profit of $20 million after taxes and expenses. This massive logistical gamble triggered outrage, investigations, and a wider scandal over how the Texas lottery had allowed the scheme to work.
16 Kissinger’s Rejected Nobel Return
In 1973, Henry Kissinger shared the Nobel Peace Prize with North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho for negotiating the Paris Peace Accords. The award immediately triggered outrage because the Vietnam War was still raging, two Norwegian Nobel Committee members resigned in protest, and critics mocked the decision as the “Nobel War Prize.” Le Duc Tho refused the prize from the start, and Kissinger later tried to return his award, but the Nobel Committee refused to take it back.
17. In Japan, the term スメハラ, or “sumehara,” means “smell harassment,” a social offense built around bothering other people with unpleasant odors in shared spaces. The concept does not describe deliberate cruelty so much as the fear of becoming a nuisance, especially in offices, on crowded trains, and in other close public settings. As the idea spread, it reshaped parts of Japan’s personal care market, pushing brands to sell more deodorizing products and even smell-management advice.
18. In 2009, Canada launched a plan to replace its 40-year-old federal payroll system with Phoenix, an automated commercial platform meant to cut labor costs and save about $70 million a year. IBM won the contract in June 2011, and the government rolled the system out across departments in 2016 even after warnings about critical problems and weak testing. Instead of delivering savings, Phoenix triggered years of underpayments, overpayments, missed paychecks, and a massive backlog that hit hundreds of thousands of public servants. As of June 2025, the system had cost the Canadian government more than $5.1 billion.
19. Even though the Minions speak a fictional language called “Minionese,” the filmmakers still re-dub their dialogue for different international releases. The point is not to make the speech fully understandable but to keep the rhythm, sound, and comic delivery recognizable for each audience.
20. In 1915, a French soldier named Lucien Bersot served on the front during World War I when his unit was ordered back into the trenches after heavy losses. Quartermasters could not find him a proper pair of uniform trousers, so they handed him a bloodstained pair taken from a dead soldier. Bersot refused to wear them, and his commanding officer treated the refusal as an act of disobedience. The officer had him court-martialed and executed by firing squad to make an example of him.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Walter Pitts Corrected Russell
American logician Walter Pitts taught himself logic and mathematics and then spent three days in a library in Detroit reading Principia Mathematica. After finishing it, he wrote to logician Bertrand Russell with a list of what he believed were serious errors in the first half of the first volume. Russell was so impressed that he invited Pitts to study with him at Cambridge University. Pitts could not accept, because he was only 12 years old at that time.
22. Delos is a small Greek island near Mykonos, but its importance far outweighs its size. Ancient Greeks treated it as the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, and UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List in 1990. In the 2011 census, the island had only 24 residents, and modern Greece imposes strict protection measures that prohibit construction activity.
23. Hot salt frying works much like deep frying but cooks food in heated salt instead of oil. Chefs heat coarse salt until it holds intense, even heat, then use it to fry ingredients quickly without submerging them in fat. Even though the food cooks directly against the salt, the finished dish does not come out tasting especially salty.
24. In 1901, Australia adopted the White Australia policy, a set of laws designed to block immigration by people of non-European origin, especially Asians and Pacific Islanders. The policy used tools like the Immigration Restriction Act and dictation tests to keep the country overwhelmingly white while presenting the system as legal administration. By 1961, the policy had helped produce an Australia that was 99.4 percent white at its peak. The government began dismantling the system in the decades that followed and formally ended it in 1973.
25. By 2026, plastic surgeons had begun using a product called alloClae, an injectable filler made from purified fat taken from deceased donors. The material comes from tissue banks that collect abdominal fat from people who donated their bodies to science, and surgeons use it to enhance areas like the lips, hips, buttocks, breasts, shoulders, and chest.
RE: Fact #30 (Einstein Failed Everything But Math) – That misconception really bothers me. Einstein developed his theory of special relativity using math. That is literally what theoretical physicists do; it’s the alternative to relying solely on experimental observation. He used mathematical modeling and deductive reasoning to predict concepts like time dilation.
RE: Fact #2 (Shaquille O’Neal’s Business Empire) – One of his biggest scores was an early investment in Ring, which Amazon eventually bought out.
He was definitely smarter than the ‘Shark Tank’ investors! That remains one of their biggest missed opportunities.
Shaq just throws money at tons of investments; some are blind luck, others were bound to succeed. His most infamous flops were FTX and a paper company that scammed him. Having that much money allows for plenty of dumb mistakes, so a few hits don’t necessarily prove he’s a genius investor.
RE: Fact #37 (Bill Benter Beat Horse Racing) – Bill did his homework before heading to Asia. He found an academic paper, “Searching for Positive Returns at the Track, ” which argued that success could be quantified through probability. He taught himself advanced stats and coding on an old computer, while his partner Alan sent him data from Hong Kong. He eventually built an algorithm that factored in over 120 variables per horse, and despite being private about the details, his net worth is estimated at nearly a billion dollars.
What kind of data points would be in those textbooks besides just the horse’s name and owner?
Ground conditions, time of day, day of the month, the gender makeup of the runners, jockey weight, win/loss history, weather, and so on.
RE: Fact #30 (Einstein Failed Everything But Math) – He actually left his school in Munich because he hated the rigid structure, so he homeschooled for a year before applying to university. The idea that he was a dropout is just a myth.
RE: Fact #40 (Bobby Bonilla Day Lives) – The Orioles still owe Chris Davis $3.5 million annually from 2026 through 2032, and he gets another $1.4 million per year from 2033 to 2037.
This isn’t uncommon for athletes. What makes Bonilla’s contract interesting is that the Mets only owed him about $5 million, but they chose to negotiate this deal instead.
RE: Fact #17 (Japan’s Smell Harassment Culture) – They’ve seriously had to put up signs at anime conventions begging people to please, for the love of everything, shower and wipe themselves properly.
While it’s true that some people at these events need to work on their hygiene, it’s worth noting that many Japanese people carry a gene that results in very little body odor. Because of that, it’s much harder for everyone else to meet their standards of cleanliness, as we naturally smell stronger than they do.
It’s the ABCC11 gene. It’s linked to dry earwax and low body odor, and it’s very common among East Asians.
RE: Fact #25 (Cadaver Fat Cosmetic Injections) – Wait a minute. I’ve seen this movie before. Though the first rule is that we don’t talk about it.
Nah, in that movie, the fat was taken from living people and turned into soap.
RE: Fact #38 (San Marino Inside Italy) – The San Marino football team has actually been to the same number of World Cups as Italy over the last 12 years.
RE: Fact #41 (Walter Wyatt’s Shark Night) – I wouldn’t call that pursuing. If anything, they were just curious. If they really wanted him, it would have been easy for them to get him.
Yeah, I was going to say, there isn’t much ‘pursuit’ involved when sharks encounter humans in the water.
Coincidentally, there isn’t much pursuit involved when humans are on land, either.
Exactly. They were just watching. If a shark wants to get you, you can’t escape by swimming. Fighting back doesn’t work if the shark is serious; they usually only let you go if they make a mistake and realize you aren’t prey. Bull sharks are statistically among the highest for attacks on humans. They aren’t as powerful as Great Whites, but they can still do massive damage if they want to. Most mass attacks happened during WWII when ships sank, leaving dead bodies in the water. Sharks can smell blood from a long way off, so they went for the snack, but they usually hit the dead bodies before the survivors.
RE: Fact #33 (Buda and Pest United) – It was actually three cities: Pest, Buda, and Óbuda. After the merger, they called it Pest-Buda for a while because Pest was the more significant side.
RE: Fact #18 (Canada’s Billion-Dollar Phoenix Failure) – It’s still the system used to pay over 200, 000 Canadian public servants, and it’s still dealing with major issues.
As a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, I can say without a doubt: screw the Phoenix Pay System. It is the absolute worst.
RE: Fact #40 (Bobby Bonilla Day Lives) – The Wilpons agreed to that deal because they figured they were making enough money off their Madoff investments to cover it.
RE: Fact #17 (Japan’s Smell Harassment Culture) – Rie Takahashi, an anime voice actress, actually tweeted out a guide before a concert telling her fans: “Make sure you wash up before you come so you don’t bother others with your smell!”
We definitely deal with the same thing at Smash and Magic the Gathering tournaments in the US.
I thought it was just a meme until I walked into a store during a Magic tournament and the smell hit me like a wall. It was wild, like a high school gym locker, but instead of the typical sweat smell, it was more like people who hadn’t showered or cleaned themselves in days. Plus, there was always that one guy who way overdid it with the body spray. I literally forgot why I went in there because the smell was so overwhelming.
RE: Fact #6 (Blood River Lake Disaster) – Always listen to the stunt crew. They see enough dangerous nonsense that they know exactly where the line should be drawn.
There is a difference between doing something crazy and doing something that just carries an unacceptable level of risk.
This reminds me of the failed stunt in Back to the Future 2. A stuntwoman originally turned it down for being too dangerous, so they just hired someone else and nearly killed her. It never occurred to them to just make the stunt safer instead.
Exactly. I was at a party once with a bottle of Everclear, and a friend of mine who was a former Marine told everyone that if they started drinking that straight, he was leaving. If it was too risky for a Marine, I was definitely out.
I remember paying guys in my frat to drive across state lines to get us the good Everclear, so that was definitely a smart call on your part.
RE: Fact #23 (Hot Salt Fries Without Oil) – It doesn’t always prevent the food from getting salty. Anything with exposed moisture will absolutely end up way too salty, especially if anyone actually tries frying chicken this way. Plus, if there are any crevices where salt can get stuck, it’s going to be way too salty.
Yeah, I’m trying to figure out what you could even fry that wouldn’t end up covered in salt.
RE: Fact #3 (Haing Ngor’s Fatal Silence) – That’s only partially accurate. He didn’t just decide not to save her. According to his book, he spent hours desperately searching for help or supplies. The Khmer Rouge regime had destroyed all medical infrastructure. Attempting a C-section with a rusted knife and no anesthesia would have likely killed her anyway, on top of the risk of being executed for being a doctor.
Exactly, as if he could perform a surgery with a wooden stick and boiling water. The rest was just Angkar’s influence.
RE: Fact #27 (Co-op Ticket Fraud Case) – This is a lose-lose for everyone involved, but the lottery operator, Camelot, is also acting pretty terribly. Once the original owner came forward, the police froze the remaining £15k, but then the lottery company just held onto it! They refuse to pay it to the rightful winner, so she’s stuck suing them for her own money.
That woman won that money legally and deserves every penny of that £30k. I hope the courts give her even more.
Punitive damages aren’t really a thing in the UK unless there was clear malice. Camelot should pay the woman the remaining £15k, but they likely won’t have to pay the full £30k if they can prove they acted in good faith with the people who originally claimed it. They honored the contract as far as they knew, and it’s unfortunate she lost the ticket and has to fight the thieves for the rest of it.
How did she even know she won if she lost the physical ticket? Does she always play the same set of numbers?
RE: Fact #26 (1G Calls Had No Privacy) – My cousin and I used to use a scanner to listen in. It was funny how people back then would announce they were on their mobile phone to whoever they were calling. Most of the conversations were incredibly dull, usually just people checking in from home.
This reminds me of that guy who killed his wife and called their home answering machine to make it look like he was out. He even started the message with, “I’m calling you from my mobile phone.” He eventually found out the hard way that cell tower triangulation was a thing, or maybe that was one of the first times it was used.
RE: Fact #49 (Sun Tzu Entered West Point) – The Art of War feels like a collection of obvious points designed to teach incompetent leaders basic concepts like ‘if the enemy has more troops than you, don’t attack, ‘ just so they’d stop wasting lives unnecessarily.
I hear that take a lot, but the idea of China as a place of decadent dynasties came much later. This was post-Bronze Age China, a time of constant civil war where people were constantly struggling to survive. This book was meant for someone who suddenly found themselves in charge because everyone above them was killed in battle. It’s interesting how often Sun Tzu cautions against killing prisoners of war.
Calling it ‘obvious’ misses the point. It’s highly valuable to people who actually know what they’re doing. There is a reason it is still studied in military academies across the world after all this time.
RE: Fact #38 (San Marino Inside Italy) – The reason it remains independent is that Giuseppe Garibaldi hid out there during the Italian wars and promised it would never be part of a unified Italy. He later pressured the new government to honor that.
Napoleon Bonaparte was also charmed by San Marino’s historic republican ideals, so he allowed them to stay sovereign while conquering the rest of Europe.
That didn’t help Venice, though. Being a historical republic didn’t save them from the Treaty of Campo Formio.
RE: Fact #39 (Spillings Hoard Filming Discovery) – Lucky they didn’t run into a dragon too, though they usually guard gold hoards instead of silver.
People find dragon hoards all the time. They just don’t get to leave and tell anyone about it.
RE: Fact #4 (Green Day’s Stolen Masters) – I like the theory that the tapes were never actually stolen. Maybe they just finished it, hated the results, and made up a story to justify starting fresh.
I’ve never bought their version of the story. Even if the masters were gone, they could have just re-recorded it. The songwriting was the hard part. It makes more sense that the album just wasn’t good and they decided to scrap it for a do-over.
RE: Fact #4 (Green Day’s Stolen Masters) – American Idiot was a great album, so I’m not complaining, but I’d still love to hear that other record.
Check out the anniversary edition, they included a bunch of demos that use pieces of the ‘stolen’ album.
RE: Fact #47 (Lukis Anderson’s Contaminated DNA) – This is my absolute nightmare. I’ve always said that DNA evidence can be misinterpreted, leading to innocent people getting arrested. This case is a perfect example of that. Thank goodness that detective put in the work to solve it.
RE: Fact #50 (Cheetahs Never Killed Humans) – They might be ‘relatively’ large, but they aren’t big enough to be a real threat to an adult human. We just aren’t on their list of typical prey.
RE: Fact #27 (Co-op Ticket Fraud Case) – It’s just a miserable situation all around. I can see how the couple who found the ticket thought they caught a lucky break, since that’s how finding lottery tickets is usually portrayed in movies. At the same time, it makes total sense that the original owner would want her full prize, especially since she lost it the same day and still had the receipt.
I don’t know how the UK system works, but in my state in the US, you have to answer a bunch of questions about where and when you bought a big winning ticket to confirm you’re the real owner. “Finders keepers” definitely doesn’t fly, and you’d have to commit flat-out fraud by lying about how you got it to try and claim it.
RE: Fact #21 (Walter Pitts Corrected Russell) – He died really young from esophageal varices, which is usually linked to alcoholism. That’s sad.
There are plenty of other conditions that can cause varices, so it wasn’t necessarily alcoholism.
RE: Fact #24 (Australia’s White-Only Immigration Era) – It’s not much different from the Chinese Exclusion Act in the US or the Head Tax on Chinese immigrants in Canada. In both places, Chinese women were effectively barred from entering entirely during those periods. On top of that, anti-miscegenation laws made it basically impossible for Asian men to build a life here. In Canada, they even went as far as arresting white women who dated Chinese men and locking them up in asylums.
RE: Fact #22 (Delos Protected by Emptiness) – I’m glad some spots in Greece are protected. Marriott paved over an entire ancient Minoan city just to put up a luxury hotel on Crete.
RE: Fact #21 (Walter Pitts Corrected Russell) – I own a copy of Principia Mathematica and I don’t think people realize how genuinely impressive it is to actually finish reading the whole thing.
I took a symbolic logic class in college and tried reading it on my own, even though it wasn’t required. I didn’t make it very far.
RE: Fact #20 (Lucien Bersot’s Bloody Trousers) – To make things worse, two of his fellow soldiers tried to get him clemency, and they were punished by being shipped off to do hard labor in North Africa. It’s also worth noting that Bersot was nearly 34, a father, and barely had any military experience. I know I wouldn’t want to wear some dead guy’s bloodstained pants, and being sentenced to death for refusing is just pure insanity.
The fact that this was during WWI makes the whole situation even more absurd. It would have been crazy in Napoleon’s time, and I could maybe imagine it happening in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, but WWI? Were French officers really just executing their own troops for something that stupid?
RE: Fact #15 (Texas Gamblers Bought Lottery) – It caused a lot of chaos. It’s worth noting they didn’t buy every single combination; they skipped the super popular ones, because winning those would mean splitting the pot with way too many people. It would have been hilarious if they dropped $26 million and only walked away with ten grand.
It’s crazy that they were so well-funded and disciplined that they skipped the popular combos just to avoid splitting the jackpot, even if it meant giving up a winning ticket.
That’s what I don’t get. It doesn’t seem worth the effort to filter out popular numbers just to save a thousand bucks when you’re already spending millions. Unless there’s a simple way to find out which numbers are popular, that seems like a lot of work for little return.
If they bought 26 million combinations, they spent nearly $26 million, right? Does that cost get subtracted from the $57.8 million win, leaving them with $31 million before taxes and $20 million after? I’m trying to figure out the math.
I don’t follow that logic. If they included the popular ones, they’d at least mitigate a loss if those were drawn. Ignoring them leaves them with zero. They could have just bought a few tickets for the 50 most popular sets to get a larger slice of the split. It would be pennies compared to what they were already spending.
I think the idea is that the expected value of those specific tickets is negative because if they win, they’d have to split it with too many people.
RE: Fact #44 (Coca-Cola’s Touch-Recognizable Bottle) – Makes me wonder if the person who designed the can just thought one size fits all was enough and called it a day. 😂
Aluminum cans rely on internal pressure for their strength. If you tried to carve a pattern into them, the pressure would just warp the metal, or you’d have to make the walls way thicker just to keep the shape.
RE: Fact #49 (Sun Tzu Entered West Point) – General Vo Nguyen Giap famously pointed to T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom as his “fighting gospel” for guerrilla leadership. He used those asymmetric warfare principles to help Vietnamese forces strike at the right moments and keep the upper hand against a stronger enemy.
Giáp doesn’t get enough credit in the West for how important he was in the conflicts against France and the U.S. While you could argue the Tet Offensive was a tactical failure, it was a strategic win when you look at how the American public reacted to it.
The Tet Offensive was definitely a military blunder. I remember reading that North Vietnam was getting desperate because their supply lines were failing, so it was a huge gamble. Still, it worked because it convinced the American public that the war was a bottomless pit with no real progress, which feels a lot like how the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan went down.
Don’t destroy a bridge completely. Just damage it enough so the enemy has to waste time and resources fixing it.
It’s better to injure an American than to kill one. Reminds me of that final scene in Full Metal Jacket.
RE: Fact #10 (Pilt Carin Blocked Stockholm) – Swedish sources usually call her Carin Ersdotter; I’ve never heard of “Pilt” being used as a name. It’s an old word for a boy, though maybe it was a regional term for laborers. It’s likely her name wasn’t actually “Pilt.”
It’s probably an old descriptive word meaning “little one.” The Wikipedia page uses “Pilt” more like a story nickname, similar to how we’d say “Little Orphan Annie.” It might have been a later addition by researchers or a translation error, as it doesn’t seem to be her actual name.
If she was from Dalarna, “Pilt” might just be the name of the farm where she was born. It was common to use the farm name as part of your identity, either officially or just as a nickname to tell you apart from others with the same name.
RE: Fact #18 (Canada’s Billion-Dollar Phoenix Failure) – Australia had a similar situation, though on a smaller scale. According to Wikipedia, the 2010 Queensland Health payroll project by IBM was a total disaster, leading to massive payment errors for thousands of staff. It’s often cited as one of the country’s worst administrative failures, ending up costing over AU$1.25 billion, way more than the initial $6.19 million contract.
I don’t get why they didn’t sue IBM into the ground over this. They were hired to do a job, they failed, and they caused massive damage. That’s just plain negligence.
IBM might be lousy at writing code, but they are incredibly good at writing ironclad contracts.
Exactly. We give government contractors way too much leeway, especially the big guys. They put in a low bid, get a blank check, and we’re left wondering why the costs spiral out of control.
RE: Fact #9 (PS4 Roach Motel Problem) – I’m so glad I live where it’s too cold for roaches. Hopefully global warming doesn’t change that.
I’m curious where that is, because I’m in Canada and we definitely have roaches here.
I’m in Michigan. They’re pretty much non-existent here. I’ve heard of them in extreme hoarder cases, but I’ve never seen one myself. When I lived in Galveston, Texas, though, it was a totally different story.
RE: Fact #46 (Sleeping Beauty Flopped First) – I was surprised to hear that. Sleeping Beauty is such a classic and the art style is gorgeous. It was the most expensive film Disney had made at the time, and its failure really soured Walt on animation. 😢
RE: Fact #14 (America Already Eats Protein) – Almost every American gets enough protein, but 95% of us don’t eat enough fiber. We really need to start paying attention to our fiber intake.
I’m doing my part. I hit about 100% of my needs, but I’m a big guy, so my requirements are higher. If you’re looking to add fiber, though, do it slowly. If you jump from zero to 100% overnight, you’re going to lose the battle on the porcelain throne.
I had bathroom issues for a while because I’d try to eat high-fiber foods and feel awful afterward. I started taking a daily supplement, and I feel much better, the bathroom situation is way improved. I’d recommend it to anyone in their 30s who feels sluggish digestively.
RE: Fact #20 (Lucien Bersot’s Bloody Trousers) – This is why I’ll always stand up for draft dodgers. There’s no honor in being forced into a war. It’s a horrific thing.
I strongly disagree. Any draft dodger who turns around and pushes for others to go to war deserves to be mocked.
The real issue is the warmongering, not the dodging. Sending other people into a pointless war shouldn’t grant someone a free pass just because they served.
RE: Fact #22 (Delos Protected by Emptiness) – Keep in mind that while we usually see it as the Athenian Empire, which it effectively was, the actual name for Athens’ alliance network was the Delian League, and it was technically based on Delos. They kept a treasury of silver there at first, but moved it to Athens once it became obvious it was really an Athenian hegemony rather than the Ionian United Polis they claimed. Even though Delos was the center, there is surprisingly little evidence of the league itself on the island. Most of what we know comes from Thucydides or records from Delphi.
It was basically the ancient version of NATO. Headquarters in Brussels, but the USA pulling all the strings.
Is it possible that instead of some Athenian power move, they just moved everything because Artemis and Apollo found squatters in their childhood home and cleared them out?
The Ancient Greeks never actually called it the Delian League. That name doesn’t show up in any writings from historians like Herodotus, Thucydides, or Xenophon. Both the Delian and Spartan leagues were just referred to as “Athens and her allies” or “Sparta and her allies.” Modern historians gave it that name because that’s where the councils met and the treasury was held.
RE: Fact #8 (Franklin Warned About Lead) – Spoiler alert: we usually know when something is harmful, but profit motives keep us pretending we don’t.
RE: Fact #20 (Lucien Bersot’s Bloody Trousers) – It’s always depressing how the psychopaths behind these atrocities face almost no consequences and just go on living quiet lives. That commander got a minor professional slap on the wrist, but otherwise went about his business like normal.
Minor consequences? Modern-day psychopaths in these roles face zero repercussions and usually walk away with massive rewards.
Maybe we should stop building massive systems that are inevitably destined to be run by psychopaths.
RE: Fact #14 (America Already Eats Protein) – It’s interesting to see where these numbers come from. The military funded studies on young, sedentary men at maintenance calories just to figure out the bare minimum to prevent deficiency because protein is expensive to ship. The numbers are useful, but take them with a grain of salt, they don’t account for someone who isn’t a sedentary young male or someone who wants more than just the bare minimum to stay healthy.
RE: Fact #32 (Eschatian First Contact Theory) – Now I finally get the reference behind the Eschaton Mind from Destiny.
Top-tier lore right here. Forget whatever else anyone says about the game, the writing is elite.
RE: Fact #36 (Michael Fortier Traded Testimony) – It’s overshadowed by 9/11 now, but the OKC bombing was intense at the time. It was the largest act of terror on American soil in my lifetime, and the fact that it was carried out by fellow Americans made it even more surreal. I still can’t understand the motivation. Remember the DC sniper? That was also terrifying, yet nobody talks about it anymore.
I remember it vividly because I lived in the area and would walk in a zig-zag pattern to my car after work. Gas stations put up giant tarps around their pumps so customers would feel safer. Everyone was on the lookout for white vans. Those were wild times.
I lived across the country, so there weren’t any direct changes here, but it dominated the news until he was caught. It also reminds me of the anthrax scare. It’s strange how many chaotic things happened in the 90s and early 2000s that we kind of forget about because of 9/11 and the ’08 financial crisis.
That traumatized so many people. I had moved there right after without knowing the history, but so many people were still doing school lockdowns and lying down in their backseats while getting gas.
RE: Fact #45 (Broken Lotto Machine Jackpot) – I was at Caesars in Vegas during the NCAA tournament, just making small bets. I asked for “five fifty” on three different teams and handed the guy a $20 bill. He just stared at me like I was clueless. I clarified, “No, I said $5.50, ” and he just shook his head. I had the $1, 650 payout in my pocket and for a second, I wondered if this was the universe trying to give me a win. I chickened out because I’m not much of a gambler, and he called his manager to fix the ticket. I’m glad I didn’t push it, because all three picks lost badly. Felt like the universe was trying to mess with me.
I remember a story about a waiter who gave a diner the price of a wine using that same “five fifty” shorthand. The customer thought they were getting a cheap deal until they saw the actual price. The customer was furious and accused the waiter of trying to trick them into a better tip.
RE: Fact #43 (Cicisbeo, Italy’s Public Lover) – Among the aristocracy, where marriages were political arrangements rather than romantic unions, infidelity was viewed very differently.
It’s important to note that this tolerance for infidelity only applied to men. Aristocratic women were judged incredibly harshly for it; it was often considered both a moral and legal crime. Even in the raciest examples of the cicisbeo tradition, women were expected to be discreet, they weren’t living like Charles II.
Women produced the heirs, so any question of paternity immediately threatened claims to estates and likely the State itself under monarchical rule.
Not to mention travel times and the post. Couples could be apart for long periods and only see each other during the holidays.
RE: Fact #16 (Kissinger’s Rejected Nobel Return) – “Political satire died the day Henry Kissinger got a Nobel Peace Prize.” ~ Tom Lehrer Rest in peace, maestro. You are truly missed.
RE: Fact #24 (Australia’s White-Only Immigration Era) – Here is a relevant story about Egon Kisch. The 1901 act let officials test anyone on a European language to deny them entry, it was a simple way to exclude people while hiding the racial bias. Kisch was a linguist who knew tons of languages, so they tried to trip him up by testing him in Scottish Gaelic. He failed, but it turned out the officer giving the test didn’t really know it either, so it got overturned in court.
RE: Fact #9 (PS4 Roach Motel Problem) – It took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize the fact wasn’t talking about one specific repairman.
I had to re-read that part about repairmen calling them roach motels a few times before it clicked. Lmao.
RE: Fact #50 (Cheetahs Never Killed Humans) – That’s because cheetahs are incredibly fragile, suffer from lots of genetic health issues, and are prone to extreme anxiety.
Young cheetahs are often paired with puppies for companionship.
Why do people call it an ‘unlikely’ friendship when zoos have been doing this for decades? An actual unlikely friendship would be something like an owl.
RE: Fact #3 (Haing Ngor’s Fatal Silence) –
Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to hold Henry Kissinger accountable. You can’t see that man sitting for polite interviews without feeling sick. Seeing what he did in Cambodia, it’s impossible to understand why he wasn’t held responsible like Milošević. – Bourdain
I really miss Anthony Bourdain’s perspective and I’m deeply saddened by the pain that led to his passing.
Not to downplay Cambodia, but Kissinger left his mark elsewhere too. The US backed Pakistan during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, where millions were killed and hundreds of thousands of women were raped. Even with reports of genocide from their own state department, the US kept sending military aid and threatened India to stay out of it.
RE: Fact #41 (Walter Wyatt’s Shark Night) – So while this guy was fighting for his life, he was also busy identifying the species of shark following him?
His story sounds incredibly embellished. Props to him for surviving that long, but the way he tells it makes it sound like he was angling for a movie deal.
RE: Fact #29 (Bear Grylls Survived Freefall) – Little known fact: on his way down, he reportedly prayed, “I swear I will drink my own urine on national television if you get me out of this.”
RE: Fact #11 (Meth Overdose Hit 113) – This reminds me of Aimo Koivunen, the WWII soldier who got separated from his unit, took his whole squad’s supply of stimulants, and ended up skiing nearly 200 miles.
Every time I hear that story, I wonder how he didn’t rip a tendon or why his heart didn’t give out.
The guy even triggered a landmine and just laid there for a few days, surviving on tree buds and a bird that landed near him until help arrived.
I’m pretty sure it was the combination of the freezing cold and the stimulants that kept him alive. Without the drugs, the cold would have killed him; without the cold, the stimulants probably would have. The drugs kept him moving, which is basically what you need to survive in those conditions.
RE: Fact #5 (Jesse Livermore Cornered Cotton) – I read his book, and he actually had some smart things to say about the psychology of trading. But years after he was incredibly wealthy, he bet everything on one trade, lost it all, and ended up shooting himself in his coat closet.
RE: Fact #28 (McDonald’s Real Estate Machine) – It’s a classic business joke that McDonald’s isn’t actually a burger chain, but a real estate company that happens to sell burgers. Same goes for Ford, it’s basically a pension fund that just happens to build cars.
RE: Fact #23 (Hot Salt Fries Without Oil) – That only works if you’re cooking dry food. Anything wet will definitely soak up the salt.
RE: Fact #5 (Jesse Livermore Cornered Cotton) – The real takeaway is that line about him having more debt than assets when he took his own life. Seems like a fitting end for the so-called pioneer of day trading.
To be exact, he had $84, 000 in assets and 2.5 million in debt when he died. Plus, he filed for bankruptcy three times. What a legend.
RE: Fact #26 (1G Calls Had No Privacy) – Back in the 90s, my dad had some work walkie-talkies that used sub-channels. My brother and I would steal them from the shed to play army with our little green plastic figures. One day, I was flipping through channels and stumbled onto a phone conversation. I was totally confused because I could hear both sides of the call, and it definitely wasn’t just radio chatter. I honestly thought it was a glitch in the matrix. I hadn’t thought about that in ages, so thanks for the trip down memory lane and the explanation.
RE: Fact #10 (Pilt Carin Blocked Stockholm) – Imagine being so good-looking that you accidentally cause traffic violations just by walking around.
RE: Fact #48 (One Cut’s Tiny Budget Miracle) – The craziest part is that it’s actually a great movie. It’s definitely one of those films where you get a much better experience if you go in knowing absolutely nothing.
I always tell people the same thing: you only get one chance to watch it for the first time, so don’t ruin it. Pay close attention and just go in blind.
RE: Fact #49 (Sun Tzu Entered West Point) – That’s not really accurate. The West had been studying Eastern military philosophy long before Vietnam. Commanders were looking at Sun Tzu and even Mao’s teachings throughout World War II, and the U.S. had already encountered these strategies during the Korean War.
Mao actually had a real respect for Clausewitz, even outside of his focus on Marx and Lenin.
RE: Fact #36 (Michael Fortier Traded Testimony) – There is compelling evidence from FBI and ATF surveillance that there were more accomplices involved. Due to tension between the agencies and the fallout from Waco, they were hesitant to investigate Elohim City further. It was a fringe fundamentalist sect that McVeigh associated with, and they reportedly harbored several people the FBI was suspicious of. The book “Oklahoma City” by Andrew Gumbel covers this well.
Isn’t there also an extra limb that was found at the scene, with unknown origins?
Jon Ronson also did some great work on this. The situation feels like a bizarre satire, but it’s real, and it’s unsettling that those types of communities are still flourishing in the U.S.
J.D. Cash’s reporting is worth checking out, though you have to be careful with it. He had incredible access to McVeigh’s circle because he was hanging out with the folks in Elohim City. However, he was also willing to speak at extremist conferences, so he’s either a fellow traveler or just a source of tall tales. You probably shouldn’t rely on him as a reporter.
RE: Fact #24 (Australia’s White-Only Immigration Era) – The policy evolved in stages. It was pretty much fully enforced from 1901 through the late 1940s. After that, it began to crumble as Southern Europeans started arriving; the original policy was aimed at keeping Australia Anglo-Celtic, with only limited room for Dutch or Nordic folks. To put the Anglo-Celtic dominance into perspective, they made up 89 percent of the population in 1947, while other white groups accounted for 10 percent and non-white groups were just 1 percent. By the time Italians, Greeks, and Maltese started moving in during the late 40s and 50s, the policy was already on its way out. It was effectively dead by the mid-1960s and officially scrapped in 1973.
RE: Fact #22 (Delos Protected by Emptiness) – It’s a lot easier to ban building when the place is only 1.32 square miles. That’s roughly the same size as Central Park.
RE: Fact #35 (Eumastas Lifted Volcanic Boulder) – How do we know he actually did it? He could have just carved his name into the rock himself.
The inscription just says Eumastas lifted me from the earth, not that he hoisted it over his head. It’s possible he moved it in some capacity; people have managed to lift cars, after all. A lot of these Greek translations seem to misinterpret the original meaning.
Probably a flippant comment, but the real answer is that Greek culture at the time required witnesses to verify feats like that. Simply claiming you did it without an audience wouldn’t carry much weight.
Reminds me of my buddy in high school who always bragged about bench pressing 80 lbs more than he actually could.
RE: Fact #45 (Broken Lotto Machine Jackpot) – I tried to grab a burrito once, but the machine beeped and the attendant told me, “The machine says you’re broke.” I walked away hungry and sad.
RE: Fact #19 (Minions Re-Dubbed Worldwide) – I’m curious if the authentic-sounding gibberish in Blazing Saddles was redubbed for international markets.
I’m not sure about Blazing Saddles, but in the German version of Airplane!, the jive scene was dubbed using a thick Bavarian dialect.
I have a friend who is Black but has a really thick Bavarian accent and a traditional German name. He mentioned that in job interviews, people really struggle with it because he doesn’t match what they were expecting.
RE: Fact #1 (Kathryn Jones’s Lost Jackpot) – I once won a raffle, but the person running it hung up on me because they didn’t like how I sounded. I never received the prize.
The organizer was probably just making excuses. You should have called the organization directly and told them the person in charge was withholding your prize due to your background.
I won a competition with Samsung for headphones and a developer membership. I was so excited, but after months of chasing them with dozens of emails, they never sent the membership. It was soul-crushing.
RE: Fact #47 (Lukis Anderson’s Contaminated DNA) – DNA contamination by emergency responders has caused issues in other cases, too. Remember the ‘Phantom of Heilbronn’? For years, a woman’s DNA kept popping up at crime scenes across Europe, but it turned out the forensic swabs were being contaminated right at the factory. It just goes to show how fragile DNA evidence is when protocols aren’t strictly followed.
Exactly, that was the Phantom of Heilbronn case. The police were actually the ones at fault, not the factory. They assumed the swabs were fine because they were sealed, but they weren’t actually certified for human DNA collection.
RE: Fact #44 (Coca-Cola’s Touch-Recognizable Bottle) – To add to this, part of the design spec given to the manufacturer by Coke was that ‘even when broken into pieces on the sidewalk, someone should still be able to identify it’s a Coke bottle.’
This is why I suspect Sprite switched to clear plastic. A green Sprite bottle was too easy to identify as litter, so they changed the color.
RE: Fact #26 (1G Calls Had No Privacy) – An old analog TV with a non-detent tuner set to UHF channels 70-83 could actually pick up those FM signals. Before 1G, there was Mobile Telephone Service, which you could listen to with a VHF scanner. 0G used the same FM modulation as 1G, but unlike 1G, it didn’t have handoffs and worked over much greater distances, making it easy to listen to an entire conversation from start to finish. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 eventually made it illegal to intercept 1G signals, and presumably 0G as well.
RE: Fact #43 (Cicisbeo, Italy’s Public Lover) – From either the wife or the husband’s perspective, I wouldn’t want Lord Byron filling that role.
RE: Fact #2 (Shaquille O’Neal’s Business Empire) – He used to own 155 Five Guys franchises but sold them all about a decade ago.
I knew he owned a bunch of Five Guys spots, but 155 is wild. I can’t imagine how much revenue that generated annually.
RE: Fact #50 (Cheetahs Never Killed Humans) – Cheetahs seem to know how fragile they are; they usually won’t pick a fight with anything larger than themselves.
They also tend to be really chill, which is probably why some people in Saudi Arabia keep them as pets.
RE: Fact #32 (Eschatian First Contact Theory) – The converse is just as plausible: maybe aliens will only have their first contact with us right as we’re hitting our own end.
If Earth is 4.5 billion years old and the Sun is going to consume it in 1 to 1.5 billion years, we’re already sort of in the final stretch.
Not on a human timescale, though. Homo sapiens have only been around for about 300, 000 years, and recorded history is barely 5, 000 years old. Making it another million years would be a miracle.
RE: Fact #6 (Blood River Lake Disaster) – I have friends who work in stunts, and they do plenty of wild things. If they refuse to do a stunt, you should probably take that as a sign that it’s dangerously unsafe.
Reminds me of that Czech stuntman who jumped 191 feet off a bridge into the water. It was basically like jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge for a movie.
“The guy paid to take risks for me won’t do it? Fine, I’ll just do it myself.” – Famous last words of a guy who almost dies.
RE: Fact #30 (Einstein Failed Everything But Math) – I’m a big fan of Einstein, and most of what you see in pop culture about him is just wrong. There are tons of fake quotes, and the stories about his youth, his time at Princeton, his views on nuclear weapons, and his marriage are often completely misrepresented. Isaacson’s biography is a great read if you’re interested in the real person. He lived a truly incredible life and was every bit as brilliant as people think, just maybe not in the ways the myths suggest.
Exactly. Einstein himself apparently said, “Most quotes attributed to me were misattributed.”
RE: Fact #42 (Goldilocks Zone Moves Outward) – The wild thing is that we’ve found ‘habitable’ planets that are basically death traps, while frozen moons like Europa, which are way outside the Goldilocks Zone, might be better candidates for life due to tidal heating. I just did a deep dive into why the ‘Habitable Zone’ is one of the biggest oversimplifications in astronomy and how the real math for finding alien life is much harsher.
RE: Fact #40 (Bobby Bonilla Day Lives) – A lot of baseball fans ‘celebrate’ this. I’m a big fan and I don’t think a year has gone by without seeing Bobby Bonilla Day pop up on social media.
RE: Fact #21 (Walter Pitts Corrected Russell) – He was also known for being eccentric, even refusing to let his name be public. He turned down various degrees and authority roles at MIT because he didn’t want to sign his name. Between him and Gödel, what is the deal with logicians being so strange?
Being brilliant at math can make everyday society seem incredibly bizarre.
That isn’t society being weird, that’s just a person dealing with a mental illness. Signing your name to accept a job isn’t some absurd, ancient practice. He was likely suffering from some kind of paranoia, but the whole “we’re the weird ones” perspective doesn’t really apply here. It sounds like he specifically was having a hard time.
Also Wittgenstein, who was just as odd. He volunteered for frontline service in the Austro-Hungarian army despite being a famous scholar in Oxford, then claimed he’d solved philosophy and moved to a mountain after the war.
RE: Fact #17 (Japan’s Smell Harassment Culture) – It’s not just about body odor; people often use it to complain about someone’s perfume or cologne. Seriously, don’t wear strong scents out in public here.
RE: Fact #7 (Sam Dutcher’s Runaway Honda) – The fastest 18-year-old Sam Dutcher had ever driven before that night was 90 mph. He handled the car fine until it hit about 105 mph, and then he started struggling. One wrong move or pothole and things could have gone bad. He could also see the T-junction on the car’s GPS. Gruver had a plan. He’d get in front of Sam, let the car rear-end him, and then slam on the brakes, hoping that would bring Sam to a stop. “I’ll let him make soft contact, ” he told the others, “and then just kind of ride the brakes down.” Gruver, going 130 mph, passed Sam again. Desautel was keeping pace on the left to keep Sam from swerving into the other lane. When Gruver slowed down, Sam tried to pass, as he didn’t realize what the plan was. Once they clarified, Sam centered his car behind the cruiser and then something weird happened: the Honda’s automatic braking system kicked in because of the car ahead. The Pilot got so close the lights vanished from the mirror. Then, crunch! The Pilot hit the cruiser, and Gruver mashed the brakes. “Hold them! Hold them!” he yelled. The cars eventually ground to a halt with the Pilot still tires-spinning and straining against the cruiser. They got Sam out through the passenger side, and everyone was unhurt. Honda later claimed they couldn’t find any defects in their inspection.
Most “stuck accelerator” stories that actually get solved turn out to be the floor mat snagging the pedal. Also, the brakes will always win against the engine if you press them hard enough.
I used to have an old Civic where the clutch pedal screws wore through the floor mat, causing it to catch. I’d have to reach down mid-shift and wiggle it free. Once I bought aftermarket rubber mats, the problem stopped entirely.
My Toyota Yaris started accelerating on the motorway once. Pumping the pedal didn’t help. I had to throw it into neutral, pull over, and slam on the brakes. It wasn’t the floor mat either, I had to get a mechanic out to fix it.
I had an ’86 Oldsmobile that used to stick while accelerating. It was terrifying at first. I learned to just throw it into neutral, kill the engine, pop the hood, and yank on the spring-loaded linkage until it let go, then I’d go about my day.
I’ve seen the video, and I believe the police and the driver. My guess is the CAN bus system. It’s essentially an unencrypted highway for car parts to communicate. The throttle and brakes are electronically controlled, so they could potentially be compromised. There are videos of hackers disabling brakes or shutting off engines on the freeway.
Wait, no defects? And they didn’t think the kid was just making it up? Clearly, there was an underlying issue they haven’t identified. Hopefully, they’ve added some safeguards to other models to prevent this from happening again.
Maybe it was just a really complicated way to avoid a speeding ticket once he realized he was caught.
RE: Fact #13 (Claudius Banned Hot Food) – He basically banned hot dogs and cheap beer. Forget that guy.
Thanks to the work at Pompeii, we can actually see what these places looked like. They’re pretty much instantly recognizable as food stalls, some even have mosaics and stuff inside advertising price and product like you’re in a KFC.
Do you want a social uprising? Because that’s how you get one.
I guess he thought that would work differently. Claudius wasn’t the only one; a bunch of other emperors waged war on fast food and tried to control the menu.
“If you raise the price of the fucking hot dog, I will kill you and play in the blood before the eyes of your families” -Costco founder
RE: Fact #8 (Franklin Warned About Lead) – Ancient Greeks actually knew lead was toxic. By the 1600s, people realized that using lead-lined barrels to press apples led to neurological problems. By the end of the 19th century, it was common knowledge that lead paint was harming kids. This whole thing says more about the glacial pace of regulation than anything else.
Lobbyists are all about the profits. They’ll keep pushing for systems that allow regulatory capture so they can keep squeezing everyone for cash.
Lead-arsenic was a common pesticide in orchards from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. There was also a specific shade of green paint made with copper-arsenic, and kids whose rooms were painted that color would literally waste away and die from the fumes. Now, lead and arsenic are just part of the background levels in all our soil.
I’ve been excavating a dumping site from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and I’m constantly wondering what kinds of toxic stuff I’m exposing myself to. I’ve definitely found some suspicious green clumps in those old shades, and they go straight into the trash.
RE: Fact #4 (Green Day’s Stolen Masters) – Some of those tracks were released or reworked elsewhere: • Cigarettes and Valentines • Homecoming • Everyone’s Breaking Down • Just Another Year • Too Much Too Soon • Walk Away • Shoplifter • Governator • Lights Out • Horseshoes and Handgrenades
RE: Fact #32 (Eschatian First Contact Theory) – This reminds me of the short story “The Star” by Arthur C. Clarke. It follows space explorers who find records of an advanced civilization destroyed by a supernova. The astrophysicist on the team realizes that this supernova was the same one that appeared as the star over Bethlehem, which shatters his faith. The final line really hits hard: “Oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?”
This brings to mind a story I think I read, or maybe it was just a concept I encountered. It involved an interstellar mission to save humanity that took so long, with generations living and dying on the ship, that by the time they reached the planet, a second mission using newer, faster technology had already arrived there first.
Orson Scott Card used a similar plot device in the Ender series, I think it was the second or third book.
That’s a classic argument against generational starships: the idea that propulsion technology will always improve enough to make earlier, slower ships obsolete.
This also makes me think of David Brin’s sci-fi story “Lungfish, ” which you can find online. It totally blew my mind when I was a teenager.
RE: Fact #48 (One Cut’s Tiny Budget Miracle) – I wanted to share a link, but everything out there has full spoilers. Seriously, just go watch it blind. You’ll thank yourself later.
Just power through the first 27 minutes. You’ll understand why everyone recommends it once you get past that part.
I was getting annoyed at the start because it just felt like a low-budget, poorly acted movie. It gets so much better toward the end, though.
RE: Fact #25 (Cadaver Fat Cosmetic Injections) – > Specifically, the fat comes from tissue banks that collect abdominal fat from people who donate their bodies to science. Since when is elective plastic surgery considered science? This feels like a major misuse of remains donated for research.
A lot of plastic surgery is actually reconstructive, like fixing facial structures after an injury or doing breast reconstruction after a mastectomy. Even gender-affirming surgery originally grew out of the need to repair damaged or disfigured anatomy, if I remember correctly.
And they’re raking in tons of cash doing it. The least they could do is kick back a percentage to the families.
And I’m sure nothing could ever go wrong when people are getting injections of cadaver fat from donors whose cause of death is unknown. Unbelievable.
The number of bodies donated to science that end up being sold to the military for explosive testing is stomach-churning. You should look into what body brokers actually do.
RE: Fact #47 (Lukis Anderson’s Contaminated DNA) – It was Detective Lunsford who finally cracked it. He was looking through medical records and recognized the names of the paramedics who had picked up Anderson near the S&S Market. He realized they were the same crew that responded to the Kumra residence later that night. The authorities believe the DNA was transferred during that time, maybe by a shared pulse oximeter or just via their uniforms. The other suspects were eventually convicted, and Fritz was released in 2017 after testifying.
This is both shocking and predictable. It’s incredibly bad luck, but DNA transfer is actually really common. Once you’ve seen how much skin humans shed, especially when you’ve worked in a clean room, it makes perfect sense that this could happen.
RE: Fact #25 (Cadaver Fat Cosmetic Injections) – “It was beautiful. We were selling rich women their own fat asses back to them.”