26 Neutron Stars Hide “Nuclear Pasta”
Inside neutron stars, extreme pressure may force nuclear matter into strange shapes that scientists call “nuclear pasta.” Models predict the material can form structures nicknamed “spaghetti” and “lasagna,” and they may be the strongest material in the universe.
27. The Global Human Development Index does not just rank countries; they also rank subnational regions. Middle Juba in Somalia sits at the very bottom of the HDI list with 0.230.
28. Researchers have found that wild chimpanzees can ingest the equivalent of about 2.5 alcoholic drinks per day by eating naturally fermented fruit. The finding lines up with the “drunken monkey” hypothesis, which argues that primates, including early human ancestors, evolved to tolerate and even seek low levels of alcohol because it signaled ripe, calorie-rich food.
29. Between 1992 and 2000, R. L. Stine turned “Goosebumps” into a nonstop publishing machine. He released more than 150 books across the franchise during that span.
30. As of April 2026, Viking Ocean Cruises markets its “Ultimate World Cruise,” which is the longest cruise in the world, as a 245-day marathon that would hit 113 ports in 59 countries across six continents. The fare starts at around $93,000 per person, and the most expensive ‘owner’s suite’ is priced at nearly $270,000.
31 LMFAO’s Berry Gordy Bloodline
LMFAO broke out with club hits like “Party Rock Anthem” and “Sexy and I Know It,” but the duo came from a famous music dynasty. Redfoo (Stefan Gordy) is the son of Berry Gordy IV, and SkyBlu (Skyler Gordy) is the grandson of Motown founder Berry Gordy.
32. In Germany, the law allows minors as young as 14 to consume and possess undistilled, fermented alcohol like beer and wine in public settings. The rule only applies if a custodial person accompanies them and gives permission, including in places like bars or restaurants.
33. Earth’s internal heat comes from two main sources. About half of it comes from radioactive decay inside the planet, and the other half comes from leftover primordial heat from Earth’s formation.
34. Halle Berry said she did not take a $500,000 payment to go topless in “Swordfish.” She explained that she chose the scene because it showed her character in control of her sexuality and comfortable with herself. Berry also said the real challenge was playing it without looking terrified or exposed, so the moment would read as confidence, not panic.
35. When the Holy Roman Empire dissolved in 1806, many Germans compared it to the legendary Fall of Troy, treating it like an ancient world ending all over again. Some people read the collapse as a sign that the end times had begun and that the apocalypse stood close behind. Others refused to believe it happened at all, insisting the news was a plot cooked up by their local authorities.
36 Marconi Union Made “Weightless”
The ambient sound track “Weightless” by Marconi Union was created with help from sound therapists to deliberately reduce anxiety. In a study highlighted by The Independent, listeners reported anxiety dropping by up to 65% while the music slowed their heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing.
37. Filmmakers sometimes need a character on screen even when the original actor cannot or will not return. They use a workaround called “Fake Shemp,” which relies on body doubles shot from behind, in shadow, or with careful framing to disguise the substitution.
38. In March 1526, King Francis I of France signed the Treaty of Madrid while he was a prisoner of his cousin, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, to secure his release. The treaty required Francis to cede territories as the price of freedom. After Francis returned safely to Paris, the royal council annulled the agreement and argued it had no force because he signed it under duress as a POW.
39. The U.S. prints dollars at home, but a huge portion of it ends up outside the country. About 45% of all U.S. currency circulates abroad, and for $100 bills, the overseas share climbs to roughly 80%.
40. During the filming of “Apocalypse Now” (1979), actor Martin Sheen suffered a near-fatal heart attack that forced the production to keep going without him. Director Francis Ford Coppola brought in Sheen’s brother, Joe Estevez, to stand in for several scenes. Estevez also recorded the film’s voiceover narration because he sounded almost identical to Martin.
41 Cholera Belts Outlived Cholera Science
Starting in the 1700s, travelers commonly wore fabric belts to keep their abdomens warm because they believed a cold stomach caused disease. People later called them “cholera belts,” and the idea spread through armies and travelers as a supposed defense against cholera. The habit persisted even after scientists identified cholera’s bacterial cause in the 1850s. It still showed up in World War I, long after the real risk came from contaminated water, not cold air.
42. The House of Habsburg began in what is now Switzerland, not Austria, with its power centered around Habsburg Castle. As the dynasty expanded across Europe, it gradually lost control of its original Swiss lands. In 1415, the Swiss Confederacy conquered Habsburg Castle, severing the family from its birthplace. The Habsburgs kept rising elsewhere, but Switzerland took their original home off the map.
43. Philadelphia’s first confirmed case of trichinosis appeared in an Irish immigrant woman named Mary Lynch. After she died, the doctor who performed her autopsy kept her skin and used it to bind at least three books, a practice known as anthropodermic bibliopegy.
44. A double-barreled question forces you to give a single answer to multiple premises at once. If you say “yes” or “no,” someone can pretend you endorsed every part of the bundle, even if you only agreed with one harmless piece. That setup lets a questioner smuggle in a controversial claim alongside something most people would not want to deny. The tactic turns your one response into a misleading “gotcha.”
45. Great apes such as chimpanzees have 24 pairs of chromosomes, but humans have 23 pairs. Scientists link that difference to an ancient fusion event where two ape chromosomes joined into one, creating what humans now carry as chromosome 2. It left humans with one fewer chromosome pair than our closest relatives.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 Gansu Ultramarathon Turned Deadly
On May 22, 2021, runners entered the 100 km Gansu ultramarathon in the Yellow River Stone Forest near Baiyin, China, expecting tough terrain, not a survival event. Mid-race, a sudden blast of hail, freezing rain, and strong winds crashed temperatures and visibility, leaving athletes exposed on high ground. Runners began collapsing from hypothermia, and rescuers scrambled to reach people scattered across the course. By the end, 21 runners, including elite competitors, had died.
47. American children’s author Eric Carle was born in New York City, but his family moved back to Germany before World War II. During the war, the German army drafted his father, and Carle, still a teenager, was conscripted to dig trenches. After the war he returned to the United States, only to face another draft, this time into the U.S. Army. The military then stationed him in Germany, sending him back to the same country he had just escaped.
48. After NASA astronaut Gus Grissom barely survived the splashdown of Liberty Bell 7 in 1961, he decided his next capsule needed a joke. For his Gemini mission, he named the spacecraft “Molly Brown,” a nod to the Broadway show “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” NASA hated the name and asked him to pick something else, and Grissom offered “Titanic.”
49. On March 21, 1962, the U.S. Air Force strapped a two-year-old black bear named Yogi into a B-58 Hustler escape capsule to test the bomber’s ejection system at extreme speed. The crew fired the capsule out at about 35,000 feet while the aircraft flew at roughly 870 mph, putting the bear through a supersonic bailout. Yogi survived and landed, proving the capsule could bring a living occupant down safely. Doctors later euthanized the bear so they could examine his internal organs for signs of damage.
50. In 1859, U.S. congressman Daniel Sickles shot and killed Philip Barton Key II, his wife’s lover, outside the White House in broad daylight. Authorities held Sickles in custody, but he still kept his personal gun, and the jailor even gave him keys to his apartment so he could host a stream of VIP visitors. Sickles then took his case to court and argued that the betrayal had shattered his mind. A jury acquitted him using the defense of “temporary insanity.”
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.