1 Buttons Made People “Lazy”
As electric push buttons spread in the late 1800s, people suddenly found themselves activating doorbells, intercoms, and elevators without touching the machinery behind them. Critics were worried the button would make human skills atrophy by turning technology into a sealed “black box” that consumers stopped questioning. By 1916, one educator even complained that pushing a button seemed to remove any sense of responsibility for what happened behind it.
2. During apartheid, South Africa used “honorary white” status to give select East Asians privileges it normally reserved for whites, largely to keep trade and diplomacy moving. When South Africa offered that status to South Koreans during talks in 1961, South Korea refused to play along and rejected the arrangement. South Korea then cut off relations with South Africa and kept full ties frozen until 1992, when apartheid ended and normal diplomatic relations resumed.
3. Hawala is an informal, trust-based global money transfer system that can leave little to no electronic or paper trail. It lets people without bank accounts or even identification send funds across borders by relying on the honor of hawala brokers who settle debts between themselves. Due to its informal nature, its total market size remains unknown.
4. A Chicago man named Michael Corke developed fatal insomnia and spiraled into a state of near-total sleeplessness. Doctors recorded that by the time he died in 1993 at the age of 42, he had essentially stayed awake for about six months, with only minimal, ineffective sleep.
5. When there were preparations for the creation of a new territory in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. officials initially planned to name it “Columbia” after the Columbia River, but they were worried that it would confuse people with the District of Columbia, especially in government paperwork and mail. To avoid that mix-up, they switched the name to “Washington” instead. The change stuck, and the territory later entered the Union as the state of Washington.
6 Thomas Gold’s Moon Dust Trap
Before Apollo 11, some scientists warned that the Moon might hide a deep “dust trap” that could act like quicksand. Astrophysicist Thomas Gold argued that a thick layer of fine powder might not support the lunar module or even an astronaut’s boots. That nightmare scenario pushed NASA to investigate the surface more carefully with unmanned missions and other analysis before committing a crewed landing.
7. An oral tradition called smong on Simeulue Island taught residents to run for the hills if an earthquake struck and the sea suddenly receded. People recognized the warning signs during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and evacuated fast, and only 7 of about 78,000 residents died. On Indonesia’s mainland, roughly 60 km away, communities had largely lost that tradition, and far more people stayed near the coast. As a result, over 170,000 people died.
8. In psychologist Stanley Coren’s rankings of canine intelligence, the Border Collie lands at #1 for working and obedience smarts. Trainers found the breed could learn a new command in under five repetitions and then obey it at least 95% of the time.
9. The famously wealthy King Croesus of Lydia asked the Oracle at Delphi whether he would win a war against Persia. The oracle warned that if he attacked, he would bring about the fall of a great empire. Croesus marched, and the “great empire” that fell was his own.
10. At a 1964 conference on space nutrition, a USDA “flatus researcher” named Edwin Murphy warned NASA that methane-heavy astronaut gas could become a fire risk inside sealed capsules. He said the safest crews would be those who produced no methane, and he even reported one volunteer who produced essentially no flatus after eating 100 grams of beans. NASA ignored that idea and instead banned foods like beans, cabbage, sprouts, and broccoli from flight menus for a long time.
11 Herzog Heard Treadwell’s Tape
After grizzly bears killed Timothy Treadwell in 2003, investigators recovered an audio tape that reportedly captured the attack, but it has never been released publicly. The secrecy did not stop people from circulating fake “death tapes” online, even though the real recording stayed locked away. Filmmaker Werner Herzog listened to the tape while making Grizzly Man and then told Treadwell’s friend Jewel Palovak to destroy it instead of letting it spread. The recording still remains unreleased.
12. Before 1856, purple dye stayed rare and expensive, so only the wealthy could afford it. In 1856, an 18-year-old English chemist named William Henry Perkin tried to synthesize quinine as a malaria treatment, but he instead produced a vivid purple residue from coal tar. Perkin realized he had created the first major synthetic dye, patented it that same year, and started manufacturing it as “mauve.” This breakthrough made purple suddenly affordable and turned the color into a mass-market fashion craze.
13. In 1923, as his health collapsed, Vladimir Lenin began clashing with Joseph Stalin, who had become general secretary of the Communist Party. Lenin argued that Stalin acted too crude and treated comrades in ways he considered unacceptable for such a powerful post. In his notes from that period, Lenin pushed for a plan to remove Stalin and replace him with someone “more tolerant, more polite, and more attentive towards comrades and less capricious.” Lenin’s warning did not carry, and Stalin kept the position that later let him consolidate control.
14. In 1997, an Alaska Airlines maintenance worker named John Liotine recommended replacing an aging jackscrew on an MD-83 airplane during routine maintenance, but the company overruled him. The same aircraft kept flying until January 31, 2000, when it operated as Alaska Airlines Flight 261. During the flight over the Pacific Ocean, the jackscrew failed, and the aircraft crashed. Investigators later tied the disaster to the failed jackscrew assembly.
15. In the 1830s, a British missionary named William Colenso visited a Maori village in New Zealand and noticed women boiling potatoes in a heavy “pot” that was actually the crown of a ship’s bell with unfamiliar lettering. Colenso traded for it, and later scholars identified the script as Tamil, a language spoken in India, which made the object’s presence in New Zealand a baffling puzzle. Decades later, researchers revisited the artifact, and newer analysis has suggested the bell was likely cast in 17th- or 18th-century India with no confirmed explanation for how it crossed the ocean.
16 Canada Made 👍 a Contract
In 2023, a court in Saskatchewan, Canada, ruled that a simple thumbs-up emoji could count as acceptance of a contract in the right context. In South West Terminal Ltd v Achter Land and Cattle Ltd, the parties had an established business habit of confirming deals by text, and one side replied with 👍 after receiving the contract photo and a prompt to confirm.
17. When WWE chairman Vince McMahon ran the company, he pushed strict language rules on its TV product. He banned the word “wrestling,” along with related variations, because he did not want the show framed like a traditional sport. Announcers and wrestlers had to avoid those terms on-air and stick to WWE-approved phrases instead.
18. In 1987, Malaysia’s king, Mahmood Iskandar, was playing golf at a club when a caddie laughed after he missed a putt. Iskandar proceeded to beat the man to death with a golf club. The story did not blow up at the time because the news was suppressed and Malaysia’s royals still had legal immunity then.
19. During a studio soundcheck, the rock band Iron Butterfly recorded “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” on the fly while singer-organist Doug Ingle slurred the title because he was drunk or high. The band let the jam run until it hit about 17 minutes, then decided the take worked and kept it. It became the final master, and it turned into one of rock’s most famous long tracks.
20. Many monarchies now allow women to inherit the throne, but the list of reigning queens regnant has hit an unusual zero as of April 2026. After Queen Margrethe II of Denmark abdicated on January 14, 2024, there are no ruling queens at this point. This is the first time this has happened in over 200 years.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Jim Carrey Rejected “The Mask II”
In a 1995 Barbara Walters interview, Jim Carrey said he received a $10 million offer to star in “The Mask II.” He turned it down after making “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls” because he felt that replaying a character he had already done would not challenge him as an actor.
22. For 10 days in 2005, garage door openers across Ottawa stopped working over a roughly 25-mile radius. Technicians traced it to strong interference near 390 MHz that overwhelmed many openers’ signals. People suspected the U.S. Embassy or the Canadian military, but both denied it, and the transmissions later ended suddenly without an explanation.
23. French film star Max Linder nearly died of cholera as a child in rural France. His family treated him by having him rest inside the village baker’s oven to keep him warm while he recovered. The bizarre home remedy worked, and Linder survived.
24. After Space Shuttle Columbia broke up in 2003, investigators launched a massive search to recover debris across the U.S. During the cleanup, officials announced a three-day amnesty that promised no prosecution for people who had taken shuttle pieces. That deal worked so well that some private citizens turned in debris from the Space Shuttle Challenger too, even though it had been lost 17 years earlier.
25. Owls cannot move their eyes in their sockets, so they must turn their heads to change their view. Evolution armed them with 14 neck vertebrae and a network of backup arteries to keep blood flowing when they twist. They also have blood vessels that can swell like sponges, which helps regulate circulation and reduce stroke risk during extreme movement. Together, those adaptations let an owl rotate its head up to about 270 degrees without cutting off its brain’s blood supply.
RE: Fact #8 (Border Collies Learn in Five) – It is honestly mind-blowing how smart these dogs are. I was playing soccer with my friend’s Border Collie once, and within 30 minutes, he had taught himself to nudge the ball back to me whenever I yelled, “pass it!” I wasn’t even trying to train him; he just figured it out on his own.
It is their eyes that show how smart they are. My friend has a Border Collie too; it will sit completely still with only its eyes moving. I swear the dog is just sitting there people-watching.
RE: Fact #4 (Michael Corke Stayed Awake) – This sounds like a total nightmare. Even when he appeared to be sleeping, tests showed his brain never actually shut down.
Sleep deprivation is brutal, it’s actually used as a form of torture.
Just to clarify, this is a rare genetic condition called Fatal Familial Insomnia.
There are actually cases of fatal insomnia that aren’t genetic, too. The odds of getting it are basically zero, but it can happen.
RE: Fact #48 (Gus Grissom Offered “Titanic”) – Gus probably would have gotten a kick out of the “need another seven astronauts” joke. Dark humor is my style, but it is truly tragic that he died in the Apollo 1 fire.
RE: Fact #44 (Double-Barreled Questions Set Traps) – Police sometimes pull this when they want consent for a vehicle search: “Are you okay with me searching your car, or would you have a problem with it?” No matter if you say yes or no, you end up trapped.
“You got drugs on you? Mind if I search your car?” That is a classic way to screw people over.
RE: Fact #13 (Lenin Wanted Stalin Replaced) – A major political rift between them started during the Georgian affair. Stalin wanted Georgia and neighboring regions, which had been part of the Russian Empire for over a century, to be part of the Russian state, despite objections from the local Soviet-installed governments. Lenin saw this as Stalin showing Great Russian ethnic chauvinism. He wanted those regions to be semi-independent parts of a larger union, which he proposed calling the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. Stalin eventually agreed to the proposal but, with Lenin’s approval, changed the name to the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
RE: Fact #26 (Neutron Stars Hide “Nuclear Pasta”) – There’s also the theory of quark stars, they’re even denser than neutron stars and on the brink of collapsing into black holes. We have a few candidates, but it’s tough to confirm because they act exactly like neutron stars from a distance. Then you have hypothetical Planck stars, which might be what a black hole singularity actually is. They’d be at the maximum possible density, a Planck mass per Planck volume. It’s an insane density, something like 79 orders of magnitude higher than a neutron star. You could squeeze a whole galaxy’s worth of mass into something the size of a proton. Even though that’s tiny, it’s still finite, which is the key difference from the standard idea of an infinitely small singularity.
RE: Fact #45 (Human Chromosome 2 Was Fused) – That explains why human chromosome 2 appears to be a fusion of two ape chromosomes. It is a massive evolutionary shift, even if the change in chromosome count sounds small.
Is it really that huge evolutionarily? Chromosomes are just the packaging for genetic info, not the code itself. It matters for inheritance and mutations, sure, but it is not the same as losing a chromosome entirely. Plenty of humans have fused chromosomes without major issues, though they might have trouble reproducing with someone who does not. For this to take hold in a population would take millions of years, though the math checks out for what happened to us.
I like to think of it like this: genes are the sentences, and chromosomes are the books. Whether the sentences are in one book or two does not change the story much.
RE: Fact #9 (Croesus Triggered His Own Fall) – That is it! I am definitely not asking the Oracle at Delphi for stock market advice.
RE: Fact #28 (Chimpanzees Eat Fermented “Booze”) – Everything from fruit bats and baboons to birds and moose seems to enjoy getting buzzed. Maybe any animal with a brain likes to change their state of mind once in a while.
Most mammals and birds go for it if they find the opportunity. Back in college, my biology professor took us to see some Mountain Ash trees in the fall. The berries have thick skins that don’t break when they fall, so they just ferment on the ground. The birds went absolutely crazy for them, some were stumbling around, others were failing to fly, and many just passed out in the fruit mush. That was 20 years ago and I still remember it clearly.
Around here, birds get totally hammered on California privet berries. It’s funny, but they also end up flying into windows and dying.
RE: Fact #36 (Marconi Union Made “Weightless”) – I’ve had this on my concentration playlist for a few years. I remember seeing this song discussed on FactRepublic before, back when it was marketed as a research-backed focus tool. It is pretty pleasant, but then again, so is almost any synth-heavy ambient track without vocals.
RE: Fact #4 (Michael Corke Stayed Awake) – That is absolutely hellish. Knowing you only have a few years left, and spending every night watching your body and mind fall apart while you can’t sleep. Most people start hallucinating and getting paranoid after just 48 to 72 hours without rest. I can’t imagine living like that for months.
If I ever got that diagnosis, I would absolutely look into medical aid in dying.
Same here, along with ALS. I’ve already set my DNR preferences for a few scenarios; getting older is a weird and macabre experience sometimes.
RE: Fact #18 (Mahmood Iskandar Killed His Caddie) – Technically he wasn’t the permanent King of Malaysia, but the Sultan of one of the nine states that take turns on the throne. Malaysia has a unique monarchy where the King serves a five-year term before rotating. Because there are nine states, the cycle takes 45 years. The role is ceremonial, with real power held by Parliament and the Prime Minister. Immunity was indeed removed in the 90s because of that golf caddie incident. That Sultan has since passed away, and his son, who is now the King of Malaysia, replaced him.
RE: Fact #40 (Joe Estevez Covered for Martin Sheen) – I watched Joe Estevez in Werewolf and he really does look like a mix of Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez. It’s just genetics, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s still pretty trippy to see.
RE: Fact #17 (Vince McMahon Banned “Wrestling”) – For anyone who doesn’t know, once the Attitude Era faded and wrestling’s popularity dipped, Vince really wanted to rebrand the company as a broader media conglomerate. They started a record label and spent years making mediocre movies and TV shows, even “Oculus” was a WWE Studios production. Not only did that strategy fail, but the wrestling product itself was pretty terrible at the time.
That’s wild. “Oculus” was actually a decent movie, especially for the time it came out.
RE: Fact #16 (Canada Made 👍 a Contract) – It wasn’t just a random emoji. The two parties already had four contracts, a phone call, and the buyer had even sent a picture of the contract for confirmation. The seller sent back a thumbs-up, which the buyer took as a “yes, ” but then the seller never signed the actual paperwork, leading to the lawsuit.
RE: Fact #25 (Owls Survive 270-Degree Turns) – Just to be precise, evolution didn’t ‘give’ owls these features. It’s just that owls with these traits were more likely to survive and pass their genes on. Over time, that becomes the standard because those who didn’t have them couldn’t survive. It’s not like they ‘needed’ them and then got them; it’s just survival of the fittest over a really long timeline.
RE: Fact #11 (Herzog Heard Treadwell’s Tape) – When I first watched Grizzly Man, the person I was watching with told me they played the recording at the end. I am relieved that was a lie.
Wait, is that right? I could have sworn there was some kind of recording at the end of that.
They only show Werner listening and reacting to it, but you don’t hear or see anything.
They actually do play it, but Werner just listens on his headphones so the audience doesn’t hear it. He listens to the whole thing right next to Tim’s mother, then takes the headphones off and tells her, “Never, ever listen to this.”
I have never watched that movie because I was told they play the audio.
They show footage of Herzog listening to it, but he is wearing headphones so you do not hear anything. It is still disturbing to watch him listen to it, though.
They don’t. Only a handful of people have ever heard it, and it has been deliberately kept out of public circulation.
Before the internet, there was always that one guy everyone knew who loved to make stuff up like this.
RE: Fact #15 (William Colenso Found Tamil Bell) – The more we look at history, the more obvious it becomes that the world was always connected over massive distances. We should be careful not to project modern national borders back in time, creating a fake sense of identity where it didn’t exist. History is really about the exchange of goods and ideas. Seeing potatoes from South America, a Tamil ship’s bell, and a man mixing European religion with indigenous culture in a Maori village really drives that home.
This is notable because the Maori were mostly isolated after settling New Zealand in the 1200s. There were very few exceptions, and this pot is one of them.
RE: Fact #34 (Halle Berry Chose “Swordfish” Scene) – The director actually made that ‘$250, 000 per breast’ comment as a joke, and somehow that just became the accepted story for the last 25 years.
That’s their quote. As long as her breasts are offered another movie, they get that half-a-mil. Even if the performance is terrible, they’re still entitled to that money.
There was an awards show where she actually made that half-a-mil-per-tit joke herself while up on stage.
That actress from Total Recall definitely should have negotiated a per-breast deal.
RE: Fact #19 (Doug Ingle’s 17-Minute Soundcheck) – The song was supposed to be “In the Garden of Eden, ” but the lead singer was either drunk or high during the soundcheck. While waiting for the producer, the engineer started recording, and they decided the take was perfect as it was. There are a few versions of how it happened, but it became a hit regardless, even if it usually gets shortened for radio.
If the story implies the singer was drunk and slurring while recording, it’s almost certainly fake. The lyrics are very clearly enunciated, and even though it’s a straightforward part, the timing and phrasing have to be perfect to keep that heavy groove going.
Exactly. The story of why it’s called “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” is on Wikipedia, so it’s easy to verify.
I heard the writer was high or drunk when they were writing it and telling the band, just mumbling the title. When they recorded it, the band decided they liked the mumbled version better.
The record label didn’t want to release it because it took up an entire side of the vinyl and was 17 minutes long, they figured it would never get radio play. The band ended up playing it for the execs in a dimly lit room, which convinced them. They released the full version on the album and made a radio edit.
I grew up in an area where a radio station played the whole thing every Friday night at 7. Good times.
RE: Fact #44 (Double-Barreled Questions Set Traps) – Legislators use a similar tactic with bills. For example, a 2026 Farm Bill proposal included a provision blocking local pesticide regulations while granting manufacturers immunity from lawsuits just to tank the legislation. These are usually called Poison Pills or Wrecking Amendments.
I remember in 2008 there were ads claiming Barack HUSSEIN Obama voted against body armor for troops. In reality, those bills were massive, and he voted against them because they lacked a withdrawal timeline. John HUSSEIN McCain also voted against body armor for troops because that specific version of the bill did include a timeline.
Our bill does three things: 1. Mandatory life sentences for school shootings. 2. Enhanced sentencing for torturing puppies in front of kids. 3. Corporations get a 100% tax credit for executive travel expenses, like private jet leases. Are you really going to vote against that??
RE: Fact #7 (Smong Saved Simeulue Islanders) – Japan has “tsunami stones” all along the coast. Some are modern, but others are 600 years old. They’re engraved with warnings like, “Do not build homes below this point.” The towns that listened survived, while those that ignored the ancient advice paid the price.
Kotoku Wamura was the mayor of Fudai for decades after WWII. Having seen a tsunami destroy the village as a boy, he knew they were vulnerable because the town had been rebuilt in the exact same spot without protection. He was mocked locally and internationally for spending billions of yen on a high-tech floodwall, and he eventually died in 1997 with the controversy over the cost hanging over his legacy. Then the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami hit, killing thousands and destroying buildings everywhere, except in Fudai. The wall held, and because of his foresight, zero people in the village died. He saved over 3, 000 lives, including many people who weren’t even born yet when he passed.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit” …something the Boomer generation doesn’t seem to get.
It is impressive when people do the right thing not for glory or public approval, but just because it is the right thing to do. It ends up paying off in spades.
I remember reading on factrepublic years ago about a Japanese mayor who pushed to build a massive wall around his town because he remembered major tsunamis from his childhood. He was mocked and criticized, but he stayed firm. In 2011, when the massive tsunami hit, his town was the only one in the area that stayed safe. His name was Kotoku Wamura; he passed away in 1997, well before he could be vindicated, but the town honors him as a hero now.
Same thing happened in Manitoba. The Red River Floodway was built and people thought it was overkill, but it has ended up saving billions in damage.
RE: Fact #42 (Habsburgs Lost Their Swiss Castle) – Not just Switzerland, but Aargau specifically.
And the Habsburg name comes from the castle, which the grandson took on. The original family name was Radbot. Imagine, we could have had a Europe ruled by the Radbots!
Radbot wasn’t a family name. Radbot was just the given name of the guy who built the castle and named it Habsburg. He was the Count of Klettgau, which turned into Count of Habsburg. So the House of Klettgau would have been the alternative to the House of Habsburg.
I feel like that’s incredibly random and specific. Why is it the New Jersey of Switzerland?
People live there because it’s cheaper, and they’ll tell you they’re actually from the neighboring city where they work. Not sure if that’s accurate, but it’s what I gathered when I read about it.
RE: Fact #50 (Daniel Sickles Won “Temporary Insanity”) – He also pulled his division out of line right before the battle of Gettysburg started. General Meade, who was leading the Union army, rode over himself to order him back into position, but it was too late. Things got ugly, his division took heavy losses, and he lost his leg. He actually donated the leg to a museum and later went to visit it, only to get mad that the foot was missing.
So many historical accounts just sound like poorly written high school drama.
This happened on the second day of the battle and nearly cost the Union the whole thing.
RE: Fact #5 (Washington Was Almost “Columbia”) – It’s so absurd, it sounds like that joke from Futurama: “They changed the name from Uranus to end that stupid joke once and for all.” “What’d they change it to?” “Urectum.”
Reminds me of that Onion headline: “Washington Redskins to change name to DC Redskins.” It fits the theme pretty well.
RE: Fact #10 (Edwin Murphy’s Space Gas Warning) – If they were so worried about methane, couldn’t they just add a scrubber to the ventilation to convert it to CO2 and then remove that with another system?
In theory, yes. In practice, you are just adding complexity and more points of failure to a vital system, which is a bad idea. Since it is the air scrubber, you would increase the risk of the crew suffocating. It might be a small risk, but NASA does not like to mess around with safety margins.
RE: Fact #2 (South Korea Rejected “Honorary White”) – It isn’t even a real compliment. Offering to “upgrade” someone’s status just implies that their actual race is considered lesser to begin with.
It’s pretty impressive that South Korea stood its ground and took that as an insult. That’s definitely commendable.
That’s gotta sting, a military dictatorship managed to hold the moral high ground over you.
RE: Fact #7 (Smong Saved Simeulue Islanders) – I remember watching a documentary about this when I was about 8 years old. I made sure to memorize the facts because I was convinced I would eventually need that information to save my own life. I lived in Chicago then, and I still live there now.
As a fellow Chicagoan, there is plenty of water safety you should brush up on too! Many beaches along the lake don’t have standardized safety systems for bad weather, and we still get dangerous riptides. Remember, being able to swim doesn’t mean you will survive a riptide.
RE: Fact #43 (Mary Lynch Became Book Leather) – If you’re ever in Philadelphia, you should check out the Mütter Museum if you want to see tons of medical oddities. It’s a bit macabre.
RE: Fact #18 (Mahmood Iskandar Killed His Caddie) – Sultans there having immunity from prosecution is like having a superpower.
Actually, no. That immunity was removed by a constitutional amendment in 1993 because of that incident and other issues with the royals.
It was only removed on paper. In reality, no members of the monarchy have really been punished for anything yet.
RE: Fact #24 (Columbia Search Found Challenger Pieces) – I clearly recall seeing the weather radar footage of that debris cloud.
We stayed at a motel in Nacogdoches when our daughter was in college there, and they had a display dedicated to the people who searched for the Columbia debris. A lot of those volunteers stayed at that motel. Seeing the map of where pieces were found was heavy, but it was such important work for the sake of the families.
I checked the distance from Shreveport and Texarkana, and it’s about 82 miles. The sheer scale of the area they had to search is mind-boggling.
There’s a low-budget documentary about the local community’s recovery effort called something like ‘Nacogdoches the Day the Sky Fell.’ It used to be on YouTube, and it really captured what it was like for the people there. The opening is chilling, it plays back the emergency radio calls from the moment of the explosion and captures all that initial confusion.
RE: Fact #3 (Hawala Moves Money on Trust) – If you’ve watched Spice & Wolf, is this the same type of credit system the merchants used back in the Middle Ages?
Not exactly. Back then, you usually had to prove your trustworthiness with physical tokens like a signet ring or documents showing your guild or family affiliation.
Those papers were basically letters of credit, which really just meant letters of reputation. It wasn’t just about guild membership, credit was a moral concept. You built it by proving your reliability through shared values and connections. I’d recommend checking out *Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France* by Clare Crowston.
RE: Fact #47 (Eric Carle Got Drafted Twice) – Sounds like he had a rough Saturday, eating nothing but army rations and ending up with a stomachache.
I read that in Alec Baldwin’s narrator voice, like it was a Wes Anderson film.
RE: Fact #43 (Mary Lynch Became Book Leather) – What does her having trichinosis have to do with binding books in human skin?
RE: Fact #19 (Doug Ingle’s 17-Minute Soundcheck) – I make music, and whenever I pick up a guitar to work on a part, I always hit record first. There’s just some magic in that first go that I can never recapture, especially if I’m improvising. I can totally see him hitting a flow state during a no-pressure soundcheck and just nailing it.
Exactly. I play instruments and do flow arts, and my first pass is often better than anything I do later. Even if I haven’t practiced in months, I usually nail it on the first try and can’t replicate it later. It’s frustrating sometimes, haha.
RE: Fact #30 (Viking’s 245-Day World Cruise) – I went on a 7-day cruise and was climbing the walls by day three. This sounds like my version of hell.
RE: Fact #13 (Lenin Wanted Stalin Replaced) – Unfortunately, Lenin wrote similar things about pretty much every potential successor, so they all just ignored him.
He basically called Trotsky an arrogant loser and talked trash about all of them, which is kind of hilarious.
He also insisted there was no better Bolshevik than Trotsky and urged him to take action against Stalin as soon as possible, but Trotsky hesitated.
RE: Fact #8 (Border Collies Learn in Five) – You should look up the Border Collie named Chaser who learned the names of 1, 000 toys. If you ask her to fetch a specific toy by name, she will find it and bring it to you. They even tested her by asking her to retrieve a new toy with a new name, and she figured it out by process of elimination on the second try.
RE: Fact #25 (Owls Survive 270-Degree Turns) – I knew they couldn’t move their eyes, but I had no clue about the extra vertebrae and bypass blood vessels. That’s fascinating.
I was thinking the same thing. It’s similar to how giraffes have those net-like blood vessel structures in their necks to keep their brains from exploding when they bend down to drink.
RE: Fact #42 (Habsburgs Lost Their Swiss Castle) – They also basically ‘stole’ Austria using one of the most famous forged documents, the Privilegium Maius. It claimed ‘historic rights’ to elevate the duchy to an archduchy. Even their peers knew it was fake, but they still managed to get it legitimized once one of them was elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
RE: Fact #48 (Gus Grissom Offered “Titanic”) – After that, NASA banned creative names until they started flying two modules at once and needed call signs. They told the Apollo 9 crew to be serious, so they chose Gumdrop and Spider.
RE: Fact #32 (Germany Lets 14-Year-Olds Drink) – I left England ages ago, just before I turned eight, but I clearly remember going to the pub with my parents and being allowed a ‘shandy, ‘ which was just half beer and half lemonade.
RE: Fact #11 (Herzog Heard Treadwell’s Tape) – Large bears don’t kill their prey like big cats do. They are so strong that they just pin the animal down and start eating. It’s a haunting thought.
From what I recall, the documentary describes what was on the tape: > !Treadwell’s girlfriend hitting the bear with a frying pan while it attacked him, as he screamed for her to run. The bear was older and starving, so it wasn’t defending itself, it was actively eating them.!<
For context, this happened in October. The younger, faster bears had already finished eating for the year and were hibernating, which left only the ones that hadn’t gotten enough to eat. With less food and more competition, those remaining bears were far more desperate and aggressive than usual.
I share this whenever it comes up. I was living in Alaska at the time and worked with a guy who moonlighted as a Fish & Game officer. Because of that, he had pictures of the scene and showed them to me without any warning. I couldn’t even identify the remains as a human being. I can still see it vividly in my mind, and it barely feels real.
Yes, I read a more detailed forensic account. While it’s tragic for Tim, it’s even harder to think about his girlfriend trying to fight back. It just prolonged the horror for both of them.
RE: Fact #15 (William Colenso Found Tamil Bell) – It seems highly unlikely that a ship from India actually visited New Zealand. The bell was found in an area known for whaling in the early 19th century, so it was probably just a souvenir or loot from a European whaling ship that was lost, wrecked, or traded to the Maori.
RE: Fact #10 (Edwin Murphy’s Space Gas Warning) – There is John Young though the Apollo 16 Commander who talked about having gas while on the moon. He was caught on a hot mic thinking he was in a private conversation.
<blockquote><p>Okay John. We have a hot mic. >How long have we had that?</p></blockquote> That gets me every time.
Same here, I forgot about that part too. It is just perfect unintentional comedy.
Man, the complete opposite of that is the interview with Robert Durst where he asserts his innocence, then goes into the bathroom forgetting his mic is on. You can hear him whispering, “Keep it together, Robert. It’s been this long, they don’t know, it won’t ever come out.”
Just a reminder that John Young also got in trouble for sneaking a corned beef sandwich onto the Gemini 3 flight.
RE: Fact #20 (Margrethe II Left Zero Queens) – On the other hand, five European monarchies still have female heirs-apparent: Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Norway, and the Netherlands.
RE: Fact #23 (Max Linder Recovered in an Oven) – That’s basically a step up from Kramer putting his shirts in the oven.
RE: Fact #37 (Fake Shemp Replaced Missing Actors) – Doing this improperly can get you sued, like what happened with Back to the Future Part II.
RE: Fact #38 (Francis I Voided His POW Treaty) – There is some fascinating writing from that era about this, as it was a massive talking point across Europe. Just two days before Francis was released, Machiavelli was writing to his friends, debating whether Charles would actually follow through. He figured it would only happen if Charles’s council was bribed by the French or if Charles was simply being dense. Even though he did let him go, Charles didn’t suffer for long and eventually won the war, so Machiavelli was spot on about his questionable decisions not really hurting him in the end.
RE: Fact #17 (Vince McMahon Banned “Wrestling”) – It’s a fun fact, but other banned words included “hospital, ” “fans, ” “belt, ” “attack, ” “blood, ” “backstage, ” and “house show.” There were plenty of other ridiculous ones too.
RE: Fact #29 (R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps Flood) – I remember reading how his daily routine was just coffee and writing until noon, then having the rest of the day off. Sounds like a pretty good life.
He wrote about 17 books and used ghostwriters for the rest. He’d provide the outlines and edit the drafts, but the actual writing wasn’t his.
RE: Fact #27 (Middle Juba Has Lowest HDI) – It’s even worse than that: Somalia accounts for 6 of the bottom 7 regions and 9 of the bottom 25 overall.
no wonder piracy is such a problem there. It feels like the only way to put food on the table.
They even have a weird kind of stock market for it where you can invest in different pirate crews and get a cut of the payout.
Another factor is that local warlords took payoffs from Western companies to dump toxic and radioactive waste along the beaches. After the 2004 Tsunami, that mess got stirred up and spread everywhere, ruining the fishing that these communities relied on and causing all sorts of health problems.
I heard a podcast with a journalist who was held for ransom by Somali pirates for nine months. He said they didn’t treat him too badly and he actually got to know some of them. Once he was released, one of them even added him on Facebook. The guy basically told him it wasn’t personal, that they were just desperate and had no other way to survive. It’s easy to call them villains, but most of them probably don’t have much of a choice.
RE: Fact #33 (Earth’s Heat Comes in Halves) – That’s wild. I always thought some of the heat came from the gravitational pressure at the core, but apparently that’s wrong.
If Earth actually had that kind of tidal friction, it would be completely uninhabitable. It’s an extreme example, but tidal forces on Jupiter’s moon Io cause its surface to rise and fall by roughly 300 feet.
RE: Fact #44 (Double-Barreled Questions Set Traps) – Basically, it uses the word ‘and’ in the question while forcing a simple yes or no answer.
RE: Fact #49 (Yogi Bear Ejected at Mach) – That bear definitely had an alien abduction experience. One minute he is in the woods, and the next he is flying faster than any bear in history before being shot out into the sky. Imagine trying to explain that to his bear wife.
It is wild that they trained a bear to pilot a B-58. Makes you wonder why we do not just hand the Air Force over to the bears.
RE: Fact #24 (Columbia Search Found Challenger Pieces) – I think they originally told people the debris was radioactive so nobody would try to steal it.
It was actually toxic hypergolic fuel, which wasn’t an exaggeration for some of the parts. They used monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide for propulsion, both of which are nasty chemicals that can cause serious health problems.
I used to live on Cocoa Beach. When they’d transport the rockets through the canal, you could literally smell them from the shore. I definitely believe that touching those parts would have been toxic.
RE: Fact #42 (Habsburgs Lost Their Swiss Castle) – Switzerland basically formed as an anti-Habsburg alliance, and they eventually kicked the Habsburgs out of the region entirely.
RE: Fact #33 (Earth’s Heat Comes in Halves) – This is exactly why advanced geothermal energy is the future.
RE: Fact #46 (Gansu Ultramarathon Turned Deadly) – The fact that so many victims were elite athletes just proves that extreme weather can catch anyone off guard, regardless of their fitness level.
If they had just used support trucks with radios to stay within sight of the leaders, those deaths could have been avoided.
RE: Fact #14 (John Liotine’s Ignored Jackscrew) – Management: “Okay, this is embarrassing. To avoid this happening again, we just won’t record any more recommendations.”
Management: “All internal communications are now subject to a 180-day retention period. After that, everything gets deleted. We’re doing this to save on data storage costs, no other reason.”
RE: Fact #37 (Fake Shemp Replaced Missing Actors) – The name actually comes from Shemp Howard of The Three Stooges. He died unexpectedly in 1955, but the studio still had a contract for four more films. To finish them, the director used a body double and relied on ‘Fake Shemp’ tricks: filming from behind, obscuring his face with objects, or keeping him in deep shadows while using old audio clips. Sam Raimi later made the term famous by listing his own stand-ins as ‘Fake Shemps’ in the credits of The Evil Dead.
Svengoolie used to host a show in the Chicago area called Stoogapalooza on MeTV, where he’d talk about the people in the films. The production stories for the Stooge shorts were often pretty sad. For example, there’s a short that features two shots of Curly filmed after he had a stroke and could no longer walk or talk, just because Universal insisted he fulfill his contract. It’s profoundly interesting, but hearing that just makes me too sad to enjoy the shorts.
If you want to read more about this, I highly suggest ‘If Chins Could Kill’ by Bruce Campbell.
I was lucky enough to see him on that book tour. Both that book and ‘Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way’ are fantastic.
RE: Fact #27 (Middle Juba Has Lowest HDI) – Not surprising that the top regions are all metro areas. That said, Western Australia at #11 is huge, I’d love to visit. The bottom of the list is a real mix of sparsely populated rural areas and places that actually have decent-sized cities.
RE: Fact #38 (Francis I Voided His POW Treaty) – Francis spent his whole reign trying to match Charles’s power. He even teamed up with the Ottomans to pull it off. I recall that toward the end of his life, following one of his defeats, a treaty was signed that gave his second son significant power. It’s a wild story, especially since the son passed away just before Francis himself.
RE: Fact #20 (Margrethe II Left Zero Queens) – Look at 1975, for instance: Queen Elizabeth ruled Britain, Queen Juliana ruled the Netherlands, and Queen was at #1 on the UK charts with Bohemian Rhapsody.
It’s interesting that was only 14 years before the release of the Belgian techno anthem “Pump Up the Jam.”
RE: Fact #9 (Croesus Triggered His Own Fall) – The Oracle at Delphi was well-known for giving ambiguous prophecies to test powerful leaders, often leading them to ruin through their own pride. Another famous case involved the rise of the Roman Republic. When the sons of the tyrant Tarquinius Superbus visited the Oracle with their cousin, Lucius Iunius Brutus, they asked who would next hold supreme power in Rome. The Oracle replied that the first to kiss his mother would rule. The princes raced home to find their biological mother, but Brutus saw the deeper meaning. He pretended to trip and kissed the Earth, the common mother of all. His insight proved prophetic, as he eventually led the revolt that ended the monarchy and became one of Rome’s first consuls. It just goes to show that at Delphi, the smartest interpretation was more important than speed.
RE: Fact #14 (John Liotine’s Ignored Jackscrew) – He flagged the issue in 1997, and the plane crashed in 2000. Three years went by with people knowing the risk, and 88 people died because someone in an office decided it wasn’t worth the money to fix a part.
<blockquote><p>In 1998, Alaska Airlines mechanic John Liotine told the FAA that supervisors were approving maintenance records that they shouldn’t have, or claiming work was done when it wasn’t. He even started working with federal investigators by secretly recording his supervisors. On December 22, 1998, authorities raided an Alaska Airlines property and seized maintenance records. </p></blockquote> I wouldn’t say nothing was done. It wasn’t enough, but it wasn’t nothing.
Consumer protections would improve overnight if the U.S. started holding executives accountable the way China does.
RE: Fact #29 (R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps Flood) – I used to drag my mom to the bookstore every month to pick up the new books, and later the Fear Street series. I have a lot of great memories there. I was pretty dumb to get rid of them all when I was 20, thinking they were just for kids.
RE: Fact #49 (Yogi Bear Ejected at Mach) – Imagine being a civilian with no clue what happened, seeing that capsule land, and rushing over to help the occupant.
I really want to know how they retrieved him. A bear is strong enough to walk off with a chair, especially after falling from the sky and getting all amped up. They certainly did not tell him, “Just chill when you land so we can kill you.” What actually happened when he hit the ground?
Since it was a fully enclosed capsule, that probably kept it from being opened from the inside during the test.
RE: Fact #39 (Most $100 Bills Live Abroad) – Panama uses U.S. bills instead of issuing their own. They do mint their own coins, which they call Balboas, but their currency is still pegged to the dollar.
Plenty of countries in the Caribbean and Central America either use the USD exclusively or alongside their own currency. It makes sense given how close they are to the U.S. and the fact that it’s the largest economy in the world. Even in Canada, you can often spend USD since most of us live so close to the border. I’d bet there’s a ton of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cash circulating around the South Pacific, too.
RE: Fact #7 (Smong Saved Simeulue Islanders) – A young British girl named Tilly Smith was on a Christmas vacation with her family at a Thai resort in 2004. She recognized warning signs of a tsunami that she had learned about in school and got upset enough that her parents alerted a security guard. The guard was Japanese, and once he heard the word “tsunami, ” he reacted immediately. They managed to clear the beach, likely saving about 100 lives.
RE: Fact #23 (Max Linder Recovered in an Oven) – I was also a preemie, born seven months early, and they put me in a cast iron pot in a pizza oven to keep me warm. My bones didn’t harden properly, but my spirit sure did!
RE: Fact #36 (Marconi Union Made “Weightless”) – An ex used to play this, or Adele’s ‘Hello’, on a loop every night while trying to sleep. I feel like I could reconstruct this song from memory.
RE: Fact #34 (Halle Berry Chose “Swordfish” Scene) – Top-tier bad movie that is a blast to watch. The scene where Jackman has to hack a computer while being held at gunpoint during a blowjob is just ridiculous.
It gave 14-year-old me a totally warped idea of what a career in tech would look like.
Consulting on bad projects can feel like having a gun to your head sometimes. Client blowjobs, however, are extremely rare.
Right? All these years of under-the-table stuff and not once did I get the thrill of a gun pointed at my head.
RE: Fact #39 (Most $100 Bills Live Abroad) – So, the dollar is basically America’s most successful export at this point.
Unironically, yes. Being a global reserve currency is incredibly powerful.
And Trump is messing that up. Oil is traded in dollars and it acts as a global reserve currency, which lets the government borrow at low rates to pay for deficit spending. Now we’re alienating allies and Trump is actively working to devalue our currency.
RE: Fact #47 (Eric Carle Got Drafted Twice) – It is a wild coincidence that they sent him back to serve in Germany when he had already lived there and spoke the language.
True, it is better than being sent to Korea, but he must have felt like, “I just escaped this place!”
RE: Fact #11 (Herzog Heard Treadwell’s Tape) – So the one I heard on YouTube was fake. Good to know, because it was really disturbing.
RE: Fact #41 (Cholera Belts Outlived Cholera Science) – Haha, so ridiculous. (Typing this out while wearing my healing copper bracelet.)
That’s such a silly superstition! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat some horse dewormer and tan my taint.
That’s all hogwash. Now, this little holographic sticker will protect you from 5G mind control radiation.
RE: Fact #30 (Viking’s 245-Day World Cruise) – $380 a day isn’t actually that bad. You’d spend way more than that on land for the kind of service you get on a Viking ship.
Viking is solid because they include so much in the upfront cost. If I remember correctly, most excursions are covered in the price.
I saw an article about people taking these long trips just to work remotely.
It’s becoming really common for retirees to just live on cruise ships full-time or move from one to the next.
It’s cheaper than a retirement home, the food is better, you’ve got medical support, and you’re surrounded by people enjoying life rather than just waiting for the end. That’s my retirement plan, assuming the world stays stable enough, and if I can ever afford to retire.
RE: Fact #25 (Owls Survive 270-Degree Turns) – Aren’t their heads designed for optimal hearing? I also think the shape helps reduce glare. Trying to turn your eyes in those sockets would be like trying to turn a satellite antenna without moving the dish.
Their eyes are actually cone-shaped and get wider the deeper they go. If they had to rotate in a standard spherical housing, they wouldn’t even fit in their heads. Owl skulls are pretty strange.
RE: Fact #31 (LMFAO’s Berry Gordy Bloodline) – Rockwell, the guy who sang ‘Somebody’s Watching Me, ‘ is also Berry Gordy’s son. That’s the only reason he could get Michael Jackson to do the chorus.
RE: Fact #17 (Vince McMahon Banned “Wrestling”) – If you think that’s wild, you should look into that man’s other bizarre quirks.
Stephanie is just like Vince. She almost fired someone for using the word “blading”, not even on TV, but just in casual conversation. Wrestlers used to have this secret “carny” language and acted like it was stolen valor if anyone from the outside used it.
RE: Fact #1 (Buttons Made People “Lazy”) – Socrates actually pushed back on the invention of writing in Plato’s Phaedrus. He claimed it would just make people forgetful, weaken their memory, and give them a fake sense of wisdom instead of real understanding.
I think Socrates was off the mark. Oral tradition tends to distort history over time. When everything has to be kept as a story, older events eventually get dropped or mashed together with newer ones to fit a narrative. You see figures being villainized or tropes being reused, which is why something like the Bible feels so disjointed. Deep historical understanding really only became possible once the printing press arrived.
He might have been right about what it does to the individual brain, but writing is obviously essential for a functional society.
The Celts didn’t use writing and relied on the druids for oral history. Caesar made it a priority to take out the druids specifically to break Celtic resistance and force them to become more Roman.
RE: Fact #12 (William Perkin Made Purple Cheap) – That’s why purple was associated with royalty, only the wealthiest people could afford to wear it.
The history of Tyrian purple is fascinating. It was made from sea snails. I’ve been meaning to get some for a project I’m doing on heraldry.
RE: Fact #27 (Middle Juba Has Lowest HDI) – Wasn’t there a region in Somalia that travel guides basically call a death sentence to visit, where even embassies won’t help if you get stuck?
A woman has been held captive there for eight years now.
The safety advice for that area is intense. It includes things like naming a specific person to deal with kidnappers, setting up a ‘proof of life’ system beforehand, and leaving a DNA sample with your doctor in case your family needs it.
RE: Fact #18 (Mahmood Iskandar Killed His Caddie) – This incident, along with him assaulting a hockey coach in 1992, caused so much public outrage that all 96 members of Parliament voted to strip the entire Malaysian royal family of legal immunity in 1993. In a way, he was the king who accidentally ended royal immunity forever.