1 Hurricane King’s Dry Ice Turn
In October 1947, an Air Force B-17 flew into Hurricane King about 415 miles east of Jacksonville and dumped crushed dry ice into the storm just to see what would happen. The Project Cirrus team seeded the outer clouds because the hurricane had moved away from land and seemed unlikely to hit anyone. The next day, scientists found the storm nearly 100 miles west of its predicted position after it made a 135-degree left turn, strengthened, and later struck Savannah, Georgia. The storm killed one person, caused $2 million in damage, and sparked public outrage and threats of lawsuits before Weather Bureau researchers showed that hurricanes could make similar turns without dry ice.
2. For the bee sting death scene in My Girl (1991), production used thousands of real bees on American actor Macaulay Culkin, who was only 10 at the time. A bee handler coated his fingertips with a substance that smelled like a queen bee, which drew the insects toward his hands and face while the cameras rolled. Culkin said he had to wave his hands near his face for the shot, then wash them in hot water and run into the woods after filming stopped.
3. In 1806, American merchant Frederic Tudor, later known as Boston’s “Ice King,” began shipping New England ice to warmer markets, even as newspapers mocked the idea of selling frozen water to the tropics. Tudor packed ice with sawdust, wood shavings, or rice chaff to slow melting, then built ice houses in tropical ports to create demand for cold drinks. His most profitable market came in 1833, when the brig Tuscany carried 180 tons of ice from Boston to Calcutta and still delivered 100 tons after the long voyage. Over the next 20 years, Calcutta became his most lucrative destination and brought him an estimated $220,000 in profits.
4. For Meet the Fockers (2004), the MPAA nearly pushed the comedy toward an R rating because the surname “Focker” sounded too close to an expletive. Ben Stiller later said the filmmakers had to find a real person with the last name Focker to prove that the title used an actual surname, not just dirty wordplay.
5. In 2015, actress Anne Hathaway suffered a miscarriage during the six-week run of her solo off-Broadway play Grounded. She played a fighter pilot whose pregnancy ended her career in the sky, and the role required her to simulate giving birth on stage every night. Hathaway said the loss overwhelmed her so much that she told friends the truth when they visited her backstage. She later had two sons with her husband, Adam Shulman.
6 Marvin Pipkin’s Impossible Bulb Task
In 1919, General Electric gave new recruit and young chemist Marvin Pipkin the “impossible” task of making a light bulb with a frosted inner surface. Managers had used the problem as an induction ritual for new researchers because earlier attempts made the glass too brittle to handle. Pipkin did not know the task had already defeated others, and while experimenting with acids and cleaning solution, he accidentally found a way to frost the bulb without making it shatter.
7. By 1830, alcohol use in America had likely reached its peak, with the average American over 15 drinking nearly seven gallons of pure alcohol a year. Midwestern corn farmers often converted grain into whiskey because distilling helped preserve crops that could otherwise spoil before reaching market. A gallon of whiskey cost about 25 cents, so many Americans averaged the equivalent of four shots a day at a cost of less than a penny per drink.
8. Pope Clement VII, born Giulio de’ Medici, led the Catholic Church from 1523 to 1534 and earned praise for his intelligence, learning, and political insight. Contemporaries and historians also criticized him for hesitating when major decisions required speed and force. Historian Francesco Guicciardini wrote that Clement understood world affairs but lacked the resolution to act on what he had already foreseen. His habit of seeing every side of an argument weakened his leadership during crises such as the Sack of Rome in 1527 and England’s break with the Catholic Church.
9. At the Phoenix Zoo, an elephant named Ruby caught her keepers’ attention when she scratched lines in the dirt with a stick. The keepers gave her brushes and paints, but the zoo kept her painting ability quiet for three years. After the public learned about Ruby’s unusual skill, her paintings sold for money that supported conservation work.
10. German company Bosch is not owned like a typical corporation, because the charitable Robert Bosch Stiftung holds about 94 percent of its share capital. The foundation receives dividends from that stake, but it does not control Bosch’s business direction because it transferred the voting rights to Robert Bosch Industrietreuhand KG. In 2024, the charity invested about €219 million across health, education, and global issues, including a major share for the Bosch Health Campus in Stuttgart. Since its creation in 1964, it has spent more than €2.7 billion on charitable work.
11 Philoxenus Chose Quarries Over Flattery
Dionysius I, the ruler of Syracuse from 405 to 367 B.C., wrote poetry that did not always impress other writers at his court. When the poet Philoxenus criticized one of his poems, Dionysius punished him by sending him to the quarries for a day. After releasing him, Dionysius read another poem aloud and asked for his opinion again. Philoxenus answered, “Take me back to the quarries.”
12. Around AD 350, Pope Julius I reportedly fixed December 25 as the birthday of Jesus, even though the New Testament does not give a date for the birth. Historians still do not know why Julius chose that specific day. Later theories connect the date to Roman festivals, Christian calculation traditions, or attempts to replace pagan celebrations, but Julius’s actual reasoning did not survive.
13. In 2000, Eminem released “Stan,” a fictional story about an obsessive fan writing letters to his alter ego, Slim Shady. Fans later treated the title as a deliberate portmanteau of “stalker” and “fan,” but Eminem’s former manager, Paul Rosenberg, said that was not the plan. Rosenberg said Eminem simply picked the name because it rhymed with “fan,” and the meaning became a “happy coincidence.”
14. In 2025, researchers reported a technique called 3D necroprinting, which used the proboscis of a dead mosquito as a high-resolution 3D printing nozzle. The team chose the mosquito’s feeding tube after examining natural structures such as stingers, fangs, and plant xylem vessels. The proboscis produced lines as fine as 20 micrometers, about twice as precise as some commercial micro-nozzles, while costing far less and remaining biodegradable.
15. American writer-producer Seth MacFarlane was 25 when Family Guy premiered on Fox in 1999. CBS News reported that the show made him the youngest showrunner in Hollywood history.
16 Kanzi’s Vocal Symbols Sounded Distorted
Kanzi, a male bonobo studied for language and cognition, learned to understand spoken English and communicate with lexigrams rather than normal speech. Researchers noticed that when he used the graphic symbols, he often paired them with his own vocalizations. Later, they found that Kanzi was producing vocal equivalents of the symbols he selected, but in a very high pitch and with distortions. His vocal tract prevented clear human-like speech, but the finding suggested that his sounds were not random noise.
17. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs pushed design simplicity so far that he wanted Apple computers to look polished inside as well as outside. His taste drew from Japanese Zen Buddhism, Bauhaus minimalism, and a belief in “deep simplicity,” where designers had to understand every part of a product before removing anything unnecessary. That obsession later shaped the translucent iMac, which made Apple’s internal engineering visible and turned the machine’s hidden order into part of its design.
18. At the University of Tokyo Hospital, a woman undergoing a cervical conization procedure suffered burns to her thighs and rear after a fire broke out during the procedure when she farted. Investigators reviewed the surgery video and testimony, then ruled out coverings, drapes, alcohol-based antiseptic, doctor negligence, and equipment failure as likely causes. To test whether intestinal gas could have reached the laser field, researchers recreated the conditions with a test doll, smoke, a laser, and a bucket of lean beef filled with intestinal gases. Their tests showed that the gas could move toward the surgical field and that a laser could ignite it, causing a small explosion.
19. In Coober Pedy, Australia, roughly half the population lives in underground homes because surface temperatures can regularly reach 113°F (45°C). Residents use the cooler ground to escape the punishing heat instead of relying solely on surface buildings. The town’s golf course also reflects the harsh landscape, with no grass and players carrying a swatch of AstroTurf to tee off from at each hole.
20. In 2021, American NFL player Alvin Kamara said he still had not spent any of his football salary after four years in the league. He had signed a five-year, $75 million contract with the New Orleans Saints in 2020, but he lived off endorsement money instead of touching his NFL checks. Kamara said he learned caution from seeing how little money his family once had, explaining, “My mom ain’t never had this much. It would be a shame if I got this and lost it.”
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 HMS Terror’s Hunter-Led Discovery
After 171 years missing, the lost exploration ship HMS Terror was found in 2016 after an Inuk hunter named Sammy Kogvik recalled seeing what looked like a mast sticking out of the ice in Terror Bay. Kogvik, a Canadian Ranger who had joined the Arctic Research Foundation crew, remembered the sighting from seven years earlier. Searchers changed course from Cambridge Bay to Terror Bay and found the wreck in just 2.5 hours. The discovery placed the ship nearly 100 kilometers south of where historians had expected it, challenging the accepted story of the Franklin expedition’s final days.
22. In 1937, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels reportedly pranked their supporter businessman Ernst Hanfstaengl with a fake suicide mission during the Spanish Civil War. Hanfstaengl received sealed orders to parachute into Spanish territory for Francisco Franco, while the crew secretly circled Germany and fed him false reports that they were nearing Spain. The pilot then claimed engine trouble and landed safely near Leipzig. The prank terrified Hanfstaengl, and he defected from Nazi Germany soon afterward.
23. During adolescence, the brain goes through social reorientation, as teenagers often grow closer to peers and less close to parents. In a 2019 study led by Eric Nelson, PhD, researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and The Ohio State University surveyed 40 people aged 8 to 19 and used fMRI scans while they viewed teenage faces. Older teens reported more closeness with peers, and that peer closeness changed activity in the brain’s social and reward regions.
24. Turkish singer Bergen, born Belgin Sarılmışer in 1958, lost vision in her right eye after her husband, Halis Serbest, paid a man to throw nitric acid on her in 1982. Bergen spent 45 days in the hospital recovering from severe burns. She returned to performing, covering her blind eye with her long hair, and became one of Turkey’s best-known Arabesque singers in the 1980s. After she divorced Serbest, he shot and killed her in 1989.
25. After Europeans discovered Curaçao, the Spanish control of the island led to many Indigenous people being completely deported from their homeland. The island’s original inhabitants were Arawak and Caquetio Amerindians, and the first Europeans recorded there came with a Spanish expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. Spain officially settled Curaçao in 1527, but disappointing agriculture and a lack of precious metals made the Spanish call it “the useless island.” In 1634, the Dutch West India Company captured the island from Spain, and after the Spanish surrendered, about 30 Spaniards and many Indigenous people were deported to Santa Ana de Coro in Venezuela.
RE: Fact #33 (Chester County’s Mushroom Capital Industry) – Fun fact: as the Philadelphia suburbs expand, developers build McMansion tracts right next to established mushroom farms. Predictably, the new residents then file complaints about the smell, and sometimes they actually win.
It reminds me of everyone who moved to Austin, the “Live Music Capital of the World, ” only to build fancy hotels and then complain about the actual live music. And they usually win, too. It’s the same energy as people moving next to a racetrack and then whining about the engine noise. Some people are just dense.
RE: Fact #30 (James Doohan’s Secret Space Burial) – I met him once when he lived in Washington. He stopped by the Wendy’s I was managing at the time. He was a nice guy.
– She canna take any more, Captain! She’s gonna blow! – Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
– Don’t tell me how to do my job, laddy. I’ve been fixing soda machines since your granddaddy was in diapers.
RE: Fact #13 (Eminem’s Stan Name Changed Meaning) – I’ve listened to that song for 20 years and I never once thought it meant anything other than just a guy’s name that happened to rhyme with fan.
RE: Fact #17 (Steve Jobs Perfected Hidden Parts) – As someone who has torn down those old transparent iMacs, when was he doing this? Those things were designed terribly.
The fact is talking about when Jobs first co-founded Apple. The iMac G3 was the first thing to come out after he returned. By that time, the company was in bad shape, and it’s pretty clear his original vision for design perfection had taken a backseat to just trying to make a profit.
RE: Fact #24 (Bergen’s Acid Attack Stage Comeback) – “He was sentenced to 15 years, reduced for good behavior to 3 years.” How is that possible?
Then he got caught for child molestation later on. He’s a horrific person who offers absolutely nothing to society.
RE: Fact #39 (UK Driver Avoided License Seventy Years) – accidents that they know of, anyway.
Exactly. No license and no insurance? What reason would he have to stick around if pulled over?
Since he admitted it and seemed like a regular guy, I guess it’s believable.
My grandfather used to get annoyed at people claiming they’d never had an accident, saying, ‘Yes, but how many have you caused?’ Driving in the UK is incredibly safe, but there are still plenty of people who drive poorly and obliviously while convinced they’re great drivers. This guy might be good, or he might just be exceptionally lucky.
RE: Fact #20 (Alvin Kamara Banked NFL Paychecks) – I wish more NFL pros had his kind of financial sense. Smart guy!
Most players aren’t landing $75 million deals. The average NFL career is only about three years. It is true that players should probably be more careful with their money, but it is a brutal league considering how it treats their bodies and brains.
RE: Fact #36 (Moneymaker And Gamble Beat Poker) – It also created the “Moneymaker Effect, ” which sparked a massive amateur poker boom. Pros were complaining about how amateurs who didn’t know what they were doing were pushing them out just by sheer volume. Mostly Phil Hellmuth.
“Oh no, we can’t be professional gamblers because other people want to try it too.” Yeah, sorry, no sympathy there.
RE: Fact #41 (Fraudsters Starved On Stolen Yacht) – ‘We’ve been battered for days, ‘ she wrote. ‘Peter is collapsed in bed. I can’t reach him. Everything is such an effort after having no water yesterday. The lights are going out in my heart. We haven’t eaten for four weeks. I keep dreaming of my mum’s steak and kidney pie, a roast, and sausage and mash.’ Absolutely horrific.
things have reached a breaking point when someone is fantasizing about classic British home cooking.
I love sausage and mash, and I’d probably be dreaming about it too in that spot. It’s a terrible way to go, regardless of what they did.
Sausage and buttery mash with greens and gravy is my ultimate comfort meal, but I haven’t had it since I had a heart attack three years ago.
It’s comfort food. Mom’s cooking is what you crave after a rough day, not some fancy meal.
RE: Fact #4 (Focker Surname Saved Movie Rating) – So the studio just grabbed an orphan and faked a birth certificate, as is tradition. /s
RE: Fact #29 (Shaggy’s Marine Drill Instructor Voice) – There is a great short documentary called ‘The Story of: It Wasn’t Me’. One thing I learned is that his ‘voice’ is an act; he actually speaks like a regular guy from Brooklyn with no Caribbean accent at all. Also, the studio thought the song would flop and would have buried it if not for one DJ in Hawaii who started playing it, which led to it going viral on Napster before social media was even a thing.
There are a few others who do this, including Collie Buddz and Alborosie. Both have been successful and have even collaborated with Jamaican reggae artists.
And now we have the ‘Shaggy defense’ for when a defendant claims ‘It wasn’t me’ even when there’s evidence against them. I have no idea how well that actually works in court.
RE: Fact #8 (Pope Clement’s Costly Political Hesitation) – As the saying goes, if you consider every side of an issue, you’re left with nothing but the issue itself.
And as someone else said: “You can always find a quote to support any ridiculous opinion.” I think that was Confucius.
RE: Fact #42 (Dale Steele’s Historic Liver Donation) – A 100-year-old organ donor is mind-blowing. I’d love to know what his secret to living that long was.
RE: Fact #11 (Philoxenus Chose Quarries Over Flattery) – Imagine being so petty and sarcastic that people are still talking about you centuries later. That is truly impressive.
That is definitely a better way to achieve immortality than selling garbage copper ingots.
RE: Fact #49 (Sanmay Ved Briefly Bought Google) – Google actually ended up paying him more than that $6, 006. They mentioned in a security blog that they wanted to give him $6, 006.13, which is meant to look like “google” if you squint. After he said he’d donate it to charity, they doubled the offer, though nobody confirmed the final amount.
RE: Fact #19 (Coober Pedy’s Underground Heat Escape) – It’s a big tourist spot, sitting halfway on the two-day drive between Adelaide in the south and Alice Springs to the north. There are plenty of underground hotels for travelers. There’s even an underground church that’s apparently really beautiful.
You can definitely do the drive from Adelaide to Alice in one day if you don’t mind 13 hours behind the wheel. And you shouldn’t mind it, because the alternative is spending half a day stuck in Coober Pedy, Port Augusta, Marla, or some other middle-of-nowhere dump. I’ve made that trip dozens of times.
While 13 hours on the road is fine for people who drive a lot, it’s probably not a great idea for those who aren’t used to it, especially when there’s absolutely nothing to look at for 13 hours. I haven’t done it myself, but that highway hypnosis stuff is a real risk for ending up in a ditch.
RE: Fact #41 (Fraudsters Starved On Stolen Yacht) – You should never set sail without proper supplies, though I guess they were in a huge hurry. Still, what a miserable way to die.
Starvation is such a horrific way to go. You have to assume they would have tried to get back if they’d had any other choice.
I’ve heard it’s actually a really common cause of death because so many hospice patients just stop eating when they’re ready. I don’t have any formal sources on that, though, so take it with a grain of salt.
RE: Fact #42 (Dale Steele’s Historic Liver Donation) – Depending on how long the recipient ends up living, that might actually become the longest-lasting human liver ever.
RE: Fact #3 (Frederic Tudor’s Tropical Ice Empire) – Ice takes a surprisingly long time to melt. We pile up snow all winter and it’s still there into June.
That’s exactly why permafrost lasts for thousands of years, even when summer temperatures hit 30°C or more.
It’s also used in building systems for energy storage. Ice is created during off-peak hours, stored in tanks, and then used to cool buildings during peak times to save energy and improve efficiency.
RE: Fact #7 (America’s Cheap Whiskey Drinking Peak) – George Washington was actually a pretty light drinker for his time, even though he would regularly put away four glasses of Madeira during dinner.
The tab for George Washington’s 1787 farewell party is still around. It shows that the 55 guests consumed 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 of Claret, 8 of whiskey, 22 of porter, 8 of hard cider, 12 of beer, and seven bowls of punch.
I always serve Washington’s eggnog recipe at holiday parties and it’s always a big hit. It’s definitely strong. The recipe calls for a mix of brandy, rye whiskey, Jamaica rum, and sherry, combined with milk, cream, sugar, and eggs. You mix the liquor first, then beat in the dairy and eggs, and let it sit for a few days.
So, is that enough to get 20 people totally wasted?
I seem to remember that the list of 55 attendees didn’t even include spouses or family members. Still, that’s a lot of booze.
My understanding was that a “glass” back then was closer to a modern shot glass, since there were so many drinking rituals and toasts involved.
Yeah, modern wine glasses are way larger than what people historically drank from.
RE: Fact #1 (Hurricane King’s Dry Ice Turn) – They need to run this experiment again to get some real data. A single event could just be a coincidence.
RE: Fact #1 (Hurricane King’s Dry Ice Turn) – It turns out this hurricane hit an underwater shelf, which likely caused the turn. It followed the same track as a previous storm, too. While some think the dry ice weakened it, I personally believe hurricanes are far too massive and powerful for humans to have any real impact on them.
RE: Fact #6 (Marvin Pipkin’s Impossible Bulb Task) – At General Electric, Pipkin created a clever way to acid-etch the inside of light bulbs without weakening the glass. His two-step process etched tiny crevices first, then used a second acid treatment to create rounded dimples that reinforced the bulb’s structure. This allowed for effective light diffusion while keeping the exterior smooth, which kept dust from sticking. He invented the first frosted, durable bulb that could be sold to the general public in 1925.
I actually learned about him while attending Auburn University, where Pipkin also went to school and served as a chemistry assistant. There are photos of him there. It’s pretty cool seeing his name pop up on factrepublic!
RE: Fact #34 (Moroccan Fossil Became Prehistoric Trinket) – Now I’m picturing some caveman teenager holding a cuttlefish shell up to his loincloth as a joke.
RE: Fact #29 (Shaggy’s Marine Drill Instructor Voice) – Shout out to Shaggy for being the only artist in history to be a one-hit wonder on three separate occasions. Respect.
I saw Shaggy in concert and he kept teasing his song “It Wasn’t Me.” He had a great sense of humor and really good stage presence. He knew we were all there for his big hits and leaned into it. I enjoyed the show way more than I expected.
They Might Be Giants would like a word. People call them a one-hit wonder, but nobody can even agree on what that one hit actually is. While ‘Birdhouse in Your Soul’ is statistically the biggest one, I talk to people all the time who don’t know it and only associate them with other tracks. Was it: ‘Birdhouse in Your Soul’? ‘Istanbul (Not Constantinople)’? ‘Don’t Let’s Start’? ‘Ana Ng’? ‘Boss Of Me’? Or even the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme? Also, did I mention they won a Grammy for a children’s album that most of their adult fanbase has never even heard? Edit: according to the comments: ‘Why Does The Sun Shine?’ ‘Particle Man?’ Others I’ve heard in real life: ‘Kiss Me, Son Of God’, ‘Mammal’, ‘Stuff Is Way’, the dad’s song from Coraline, and various random Disney/TV projects.
RE: Fact #6 (Marvin Pipkin’s Impossible Bulb Task) – > As it turned out, a short bath in the weaker cleaning solution, not long enough to remove the etching, caused the etching of the first frosting treatment to form dimples in the etching, that strengthened the glass. For anyone curious about the mechanics, acid etching was a known way to frost bulbs, but it used to make them brittle.
His technique involved a two-step acid process. The first step was the standard etching that created tiny crevices in the glass. He then added a second acid bath that smoothed those crevices into soft, rounded dimples, which significantly strengthened the bulb.
RE: Fact #16 (Kanzi’s Vocal Symbols Sounded Distorted) – Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t bonobos the only apes capable of this because they have more advanced brain development in those areas and are generally among the most intelligent?
Orangutans are super smart, too. I wonder if they could actually pull this off, or if their brain structure is just too different?
There’s an old myth that orangutans can actually speak, but they choose not to around humans because they’re afraid they’ll be forced to work.
RE: Fact #40 (Doctor Who’s Lost Christmas Episode) – It’s not technically impossible to find, but it’s very unlikely since no copies were sold abroad. The BBC did make review copies, and sometimes tapes marked for destruction were smuggled out or taken by staff. That said, it’s still a long shot, especially since the story that is most likely to show up is still completely missing all seven of its parts.
RE: Fact #38 (Doodler Sketched Victims Before Murder) – It’s not that his identity is unknown; the police know exactly who he is. At one stage they were ready to move forward, but the case relied heavily on those three survivors being willing to testify. The police still keep an eye on him, but he essentially retired from killing once he realized they were onto him. He’s reportedly in his 70s and living in the East Bay now. For everyone in the San Francisco area, I hope it brings some comfort knowing there’s a retired serial killer living his golden years while the authorities know exactly who he is but can’t do anything about it.
Is there actually a source confirming they know who it is? It seems unlikely they wouldn’t use that information to secure a warrant and gather more evidence.
That’s exactly what puzzles me. Usually, once someone like that is identified, you can find more evidence. Often, the protection for the suspect is simply the police being unable to find them in the first place. Sometimes cases go cold because the killer is already in prison, meaning there was too big a gap before anyone connected the dots.
This is bizarre. Are you saying that if the police have evidence linking me to multiple murders, but the victims are gone and no one is willing to testify, I’d just walk free? That doesn’t add up. It sounds like they don’t have enough evidence and are just bothering the guy.
Without DNA evidence, you are left with witness testimony, and if the witnesses refuse to come forward, it’s nearly impossible to get a conviction.
In 1976? Maybe. In 2026? Probably not. It has become much harder to get away with murder over the last 50 years.
Nowadays, they’d catch you using your car’s Bluetooth signal picked up by a camera near the scene or some other modern surveillance tech. I was reading that soon, cameras might even recognize the Bluetooth ‘fingerprint’ of someone with a pacemaker since those devices send updates to apps via Bluetooth. It’s pretty creepy.
RE: Fact #36 (Moneymaker And Gamble Beat Poker) – This makes me feel old. I remember when my friends would get together in someone’s basement to play Hold ’em, complete with a briefcase full of decent chips. Back then, the WSOP players were household names we actually debated about on ESPN.
RE: Fact #43 (Niagara Falls Is Eroding Away) – I keep wondering what will happen once the lake finally bursts through and comes thundering down the new canyon.
RE: Fact #17 (Steve Jobs Perfected Hidden Parts) – I grew up with an original Macintosh. When we finally replaced it and didn’t really need it anymore, I asked if I could take it apart. I was surprised to find the signatures of the entire project team cast into the inside of the casing, hidden under the black shielding paint. It was a really cool find.
RE: Fact #23 (Teen Brains Shift Toward Peers) – I wonder if this is why kids go through that “omg mom, you’re so embarrassing” phase.
RE: Fact #1 (Hurricane King’s Dry Ice Turn) – Dry ice is dangerous stuff. My buddy bought some to keep his lunch cool on a road trip, and three years later, he got hit by a car.
Lunchables are the real danger. My dear old mum had one a few years back, and now she needs a walker.
I remember my uncle was taken by the cartel, no ransom, no threat, just gone. Detectives thought it was about his family’s wealth, but I knew it was related to the dry ice sold near his property. I’ve personally suffered mental distress just knowing I can buy that stuff online.
RE: Fact #37 (Crosswalk Buttons Became Placebo Controls) – Some cities actually use these buttons to extend the walk signal on roads that don’t really require such strict timing.
RE: Fact #27 (Yakult Ladies Check Elderly Customers) – We had this in Singapore and Malaysia too. Ladies in uniforms would deliver probiotic drinks door-to-door. They were assigned specific zones, so for customers with subscriptions, they became a familiar face and even a family friend. They’d chat with the kids and families, basically doing exactly what this fact describes, and doubled as a wellness check. If they had leftovers, you could buy them after they finished their rounds. You’d see them about once a week, and the kids loved them. I have really fond memories of it; it was very community-focused and they were never pushy. They’ve become less common with modern delivery, but they’re still around.
They visit businesses, too. They come to the schools I work at every week to visit the staff room, where people can buy drinks. Sometimes they even leave free samples on the teachers’ desks.
We still have it. A lady who lives in our neighborhood delivers to us every two weeks. She’s a housewife doing it for some extra cash. I really love that community vibe.
RE: Fact #7 (America’s Cheap Whiskey Drinking Peak) – I can’t imagine how awful I’d feel drinking that much liquor every single day.
RE: Fact #47 (Singapore’s Germany Gambling PSA Backfired) – The bit John Oliver did on this is hilarious. The kid ends up wearing a fur coat, calling his chauffeur, and complaining about another “bad bet” his dad made.
I thought I remembered that being the ad. The segments from Last Week Tonight really tend to stick in your mind.
RE: Fact #37 (Crosswalk Buttons Became Placebo Controls) – In some parts of Los Angeles, you really do have to press the button to get a walk signal. It gets pretty frustrating when people crowd around the button and nobody actually presses it.
It reminds me of those long bathroom lines with two stalls where nobody at the front ever checks to see if a door is unlocked.
I was once in a bathroom line that turned a corner, so only the first few people could see that the urinals were wide open. A crowd of 20 people stood there waiting for a stall, and the people at the front didn’t even say anything to the rest of us until the janitor finally came by and cleared it out. Too funny.
That reminds me of a time I was at a local festival with portable toilets. I stood behind a guy who wasn’t even actually in line for about 10 minutes before he just walked away. There wasn’t even anyone in the unit.
You just walk up and give it a press while saying, ‘Yeah man, I’m sure you already hit it, but I’ll give it another poke just in case.’
RE: Fact #5 (Anne Hathaway’s Painful Stage Role) – Courteney Cox went through eight miscarriages. She’s talked openly about how painful it was to endure those losses while playing Monica on “Friends” during the infertility storyline.
Good god, eight is just heartbreaking. I can’t imagine going through one, let alone eight.
RE: Fact #50 (Brodie Helmets Raised Injury Reports) – It’s the same logic used by people who claim motorcycle helmets cause neck injuries. They don’t, but a lot of riders who end up with neck injuries would have just been dead from head trauma if they weren’t wearing a helmet.
The key word being missed is “survivable.” People without helmets get neck injuries too, but those aren’t usually documented because the person died at the scene.
RE: Fact #25 (Curaçao’s Indigenous Deportation Under Spain) – The older I get, the more I realize how much of our history lessons were sanitized.
Pretty much any time an outside group “discovered” and laid claim to new territory, atrocities were standard practice.
Columbus discovered the Caribbean and one of the first things he did was write to a friend about the girls he thought were perfect for raping.
The world would look very different if we actually taught the truth. People are just too afraid to tell kids about the terrible things humans have done.
We’ve done? We’re still doing it. Eventually, we’ll realize that paying people less for the same work just because they live in a poorer country isn’t okay. It’s still exploitation, but because it’s not technically slavery, everyone acts like it’s fine. And for what? So we can buy cheap clothes, coffee, and chocolate. It’s absurd.
RE: Fact #22 (Hitler’s Fake Suicide Mission Prank) – It is crazy that Hanfstaengl was a Harvard grad who worked for FDR, while his son ended up as Hitler’s godson before enlisting in the U.S. Army. That family history is full of wild twists.
RE: Fact #21 (HMS Terror’s Hunter-Led Discovery) – > According to Louie Kamookak, a resident of nearby Gjoa Haven and a historian on the Franklin expedition, Parks Canada had ignored the stories of locals that suggested that the wreck of Terror was in her namesake bay, despite many modern stories of sightings by hunters and from airplanes.
Seriously? The ship is in ‘Terror Bay’ and the thought of checking there never crossed their minds?
RE: Fact #18 (Surgery Laser Ignited Intestinal Gas) – Standard procedure should really involve intubating the anus to vent the gas somewhere else.
Or they could just vacuum the area and pump in an argon atmosphere, like you’re forging high-end steel alloys.
Wait, you guys weren’t doing that already? It’s just part of the daily routine. Wake up, poop, shower, insert the fart diversion tube, and put your pants on one leg at a time.
RE: Fact #39 (UK Driver Avoided License Seventy Years) – This reminds me of that Simpsons scene where the family is rushing to the car to escape and Marge says, ‘Homer, you don’t have a license, you can’t drive!’ Homer just starts the engine and says, ‘It’s working!’
I used to work at Domino’s with a guy who would brag, ‘I’ve been driving for 40 years… I even had a license for 10 of them!’
RE: Fact #17 (Steve Jobs Perfected Hidden Parts) – He also got cancer and decided to just eat more fruit instead of going to the doctor for proper treatment until it was way too late. It goes to show that those kinds of personality quirks aren’t always a good thing.
The worst part is that once his fruit diet predictably didn’t work for the cancer, he used his wealth and connections to get a liver transplant that someone else could have had.
This is the same guy who refused to get license plates, so he’d just keep buying new Mercedes and swapping them out before the grace period ended.
He was also convinced that his fruit diet made him immune to body odor, even though everyone around him kept telling him it definitely didn’t. That’s my favorite fact about him.
RE: Fact #38 (Doodler Sketched Victims Before Murder) – There was a wealthy murderer in the Indianapolis suburbs who was suspected and even publicly accused by a regular at the bars where a series of men vanished. His estate had bodies hidden everywhere.
RE: Fact #32 (Michelangelo’s Hidden Medici Chapel Room) – Wait, Michelangelo helped the republic against the Medici, and these drawings were found in a Medici crypt? Was he hiding, or was he a prisoner?
RE: Fact #12 (Pope Julius Picked Christmas Day) – He probably realized everyone would want that week off between Christmas and the New Year. The guy was a genius.
That is one of the main theories. Since people were already used to partying during that time of year, it just made sense to make it the official Christian holiday.
RE: Fact #35 (Caroline Newton’s Nose-Biting Defense) – You missed the best part! “And eat it too, ” added a learned gentleman at the bar.
RE: Fact #15 (Seth MacFarlane’s Young Showrunner Record) – He was actually supposed to be on one of the 9/11 planes, but he missed the flight because he was hungover and there was a mix-up with his travel itinerary.
RE: Fact #48 (Pink Duck Carries Chicken Risk) – You can cook duck medium rare and keep it safe by using a sous vide setup, which lots of high-end restaurants do and you can easily do at home. It’s all about low and slow. Safety guidelines usually assume the meat only hits that temp for a split second, but if you hold it at a lower temp for a longer time, it’s just as safe.
Chicken breast cooked at 145 degrees for 10 minutes is just as safe as cooking it to 165, and it tastes way better.
I think for most people, 150 degrees is more palatable, it’s still juicy but feels more recognizable. 145 and below gets a texture that a lot of people find weirdly soft, not even counting the extra heat from searing.
RE: Fact #40 (Doctor Who’s Lost Christmas Episode) – On a similar note, the only live footage of The Beatles performing ‘Ticket to Ride’ on Top of the Pops survived because it was shown in an episode of Doctor Who. It was a scene where someone from the future was watching a broadcast through a time portal, and the joke was that the song was actually brand new when it aired.
There’s an old 1930s BBC broadcast that only exists because strange atmospheric conditions carried the signal all the way to New York. Back then, you needed a TV set that could pick up the 405-line VHF signal and a 16mm camera to film the screen. If it hadn’t been for that freak 3, 000-mile signal hop, the recording never would have happened.
I didn’t realize the BBC was broadcasting TV in the 1930s. I figured that was all still in the experimental phase back then.
RE: Fact #38 (Doodler Sketched Victims Before Murder) – I think I read a few years ago that they planned to use forensic genetic genealogy, but I have no idea what happened with that.
RE: Fact #36 (Moneymaker And Gamble Beat Poker) – Chris Moneymaker is a legend. He was just farting around playing online poker, won a seat at the WSOP for an $86 buy-in, and then won the whole $2.5 million main prize in his very first live tournament ever. Imagine if the best guy on your office softball team got recruited by the Dodgers and hit a walk-off home run to win the World Series in his first season. That’s basically what he did to pro poker in 2003.
Am I misremembering, or did they almost not let him play because they thought he was using a fake name? Might not have been this specific tournament, but I’ve definitely heard a story like that about him.
No, the story is that when ESPN was deciding who to cover, they went with all the favorites. Then those favorites lost. They didn’t want to follow Moneymaker because his name sounded fake, but someone talked them into it, and the rest is history.
RE: Fact #46 (Lavender Scare Purged Gay Workers) – Up in Canada, they actually used something called a “Fruit Machine” to screen for gay people working in the public service.
RE: Fact #2 (Macaulay Culkin’s Real Bee Swarm) – He says the scent kept the bees from seeing him as a threat. This part of the story sounded even worse, though: > Filmmakers captured the shot, and Culkin avoided getting stung, though his body was buzzing with trepidation for another scene where he and Chlumsky had to jump into a lake. Culkin told McCarthy trappers were present to mitigate potential harm. >”So what they do is they catch the water moccasins, those snakes that are poisonous, ” the “Home Alone” star recalled. “They catch the water moccasins and then cut them into pieces. And then they would use that as bait for the snapping turtles. And then they would take the snapping turtles and cut them up and use them as bait for the alligators. And I’m just like, ‘What lake are we jumping into? Jeez! Have you ever heard of a swimming pool or something?'”
I wonder if that movie actually had the “no animals were harmed” disclaimer.
RE: Fact #20 (Alvin Kamara Banked NFL Paychecks) – It is wild that Alvin Kamara is still living like he’s broke despite that huge contract. He mentions his mom working multiple jobs to keep them afloat, and it sounds like he’s terrified of ending up back in that spot. He’s essentially keeping his lifestyle modest to avoid ever having to worry about money again.
How do you even maintain NFL-level size and strength on just bread and peanut butter?
Pro athletes are built differently. Look at DK Metcalf, he famously lived off candy and black coffee.
RE: Fact #9 (Ruby Elephant’s Secret Painting Talent) – The saddest part to me isn’t that she died, that happens in nature, and nothing lasts forever. The real tragedy is her spending those first years of life isolated without other elephants. Poor thing. Rest in peace.
RE: Fact #31 (Zephany Nurse’s Schoolyard Family Reunion) – The ‘meeting a sibling at school’ thing actually happened to my friend’s cousin. Her dad was a secret bigamist with one family in the UK and another in Pakistan. The Pakistani wife moved to the UK without telling him because he wasn’t keeping in touch. By sheer coincidence, the daughters from both families started at the same secondary school and ended up in the same class. One conversation later, ‘we look alike, where are you from? Let me see photos’, they realized they had the same dad.
That’s wild. It’s not easy to immigrate, get a job, and find a place in the same city, let alone the same neighborhood.
RE: Fact #28 (Thomas Salme’s Fake Pilot License) – it looks like he at least had some actual simulator training before faking the license, which is more than most people who fake degrees do. He should still go to jail for it, though.
RE: Fact #39 (UK Driver Avoided License Seventy Years) – My dad went ten years without an MOT, insurance, or road tax. I was always shocked he never got caught, especially with all the ANPR cameras you see on those police shows. Once, a cable drum fell off a truck and totaled his car. I still remember the phone call and helping him duct-tape the whole thing back together.
My cousin is named after his father, so whenever he got pulled over, he’d just give his dad’s license details. I had no idea until I saw him driving with learner plates one day. He finally got busted at 36.
RE: Fact #44 (Goliath’s Height Grew In Texts) – I’ll be honest, I always pictured Goliath as being 30 feet tall, like a Balrog encounter. I guess that’s what happens when you’re a kid stuck in church and they finally mention a cool story.
RE: Fact #23 (Teen Brains Shift Toward Peers) – I wonder how this shift in the teenage brain affects kids who are being brutally bullied or ostracized by their peers.
It makes you overcompensate for validation, which can lead to a lifelong fear of rejection and an inability to say no. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.
RE: Fact #46 (Lavender Scare Purged Gay Workers) – It wasn’t just government employees being targeted, it was anyone famous or well-known, too.
I feel so bad for those people; what a nightmare time to be alive. It makes me want to show even more support for Pride to make sure we don’t repeat that kind of history.
RE: Fact #4 (Focker Surname Saved Movie Rating) – A WWII pilot is giving a lecture at a posh girls’ school in England: ‘So, there I was, 30, 000 feet above the channel and suddenly, six Fokkers came out of the sun straight for me! And then I noticed three more Fokkers charging towards me on my port beam! What was a chap to do?’ ‘Nothing to worry about, girls’ said the flustered headmistress’, ‘Fokker is a make of German aircraft!’ There was a pause… ‘Well, I don’t know about that’ said Charlie, ‘but those Fokkers were definitely flying Messerschmitts!’
My grandfather was in the Air Force and was responsible for bringing down 3 Messerschmitts and 2 Focke-Wulfs. He was the worst mechanic the Luftwaffe ever had.
RE: Fact #19 (Coober Pedy’s Underground Heat Escape) – They left out the fact that this is an opal mining area, and a lot of people who have bought land there have said it paid for itself in opals.
I’m about to build myself a six-story ranch-style house. The front door will be on the “top” floor.
I have one of those, except it’s an outhouse. You just jump down into the rest of the place. It’s not a great “house, ” though. I really don’t like it and I’m pretty sure the real estate agent lied to me.
RE: Fact #35 (Caroline Newton’s Nose-Biting Defense) – > “If she wanted to be kissed, she had a husband to kiss her, and he was a much handsomer man than defendant ever was, even before he lost his nose.” I like to think Caroline flipped him the double bird after saying that.
“Sure, I’ll take her to court. What’s the worst that could happen?”
RE: Fact #3 (Frederic Tudor’s Tropical Ice Empire) – During the 19th-century gold rush, wealthy people in Melbourne imported ice from New England. They shipped it all the way around the Americas and across the Pacific just to show off by serving lemonade with ice during the Australian summer.
RE: Fact #44 (Goliath’s Height Grew In Texts) – I’ve always found it silly that David is portrayed as the underdog, considering he brought a long-range weapon to a fight.
RE: Fact #30 (James Doohan’s Secret Space Burial) – When they crash the ISS in a few years, there won’t be much left of him.
Is he in a canister? Why not release his urn before it reenters? Never mind, I found the answer. Apparently his ashes were among some postcards smuggled on board a flight to the ISS.
RE: Fact #24 (Bergen’s Acid Attack Stage Comeback) – Her sister talked about their mother’s life after what happened to Bergen: “After that pain, my mother buried herself in the grave. She wore black for everything, weddings, feasts, you name it. When Belgin died, my mother died too. She’d talk to herself, and since my sister loved coffee, my mother would make two cups every morning just to talk to her. She spent all day in my sister’s room, praying among the posters, saying, ‘My daughter is afraid of the dark and being alone.’ We’d sit with her in the cemetery until sunrise.” God, the scars something like this leaves behind.
Wait, he only served seven months for the murder? What her mother went through is truly unimaginable.
RE: Fact #15 (Seth MacFarlane’s Young Showrunner Record) – MacFarlane was only 24 when Fox announced they were greenlighting Family Guy in 1998. Just a decade later, the show was a billion-dollar franchise, and he became the highest-paid writer on TV after signing a $100-million deal to keep Family Guy and American Dad! on the network until 2012.
Seth was only 21 or 22 when he worked with Butch Hartman on the first season of Johnny Bravo. Adam West even showed up in an episode.
RE: Fact #10 (Bosch’s Charity-Controlled Corporate Structure) – Also, Bosch puts out 10/10 guides that teach engineering and explain how things work. They are a genuinely fantastic company.
RE: Fact #21 (HMS Terror’s Hunter-Led Discovery) – Maybe the name ‘Terror Bay’ should have been a massive hint.
Kind of like how Mozart should have stayed away from his own death house.
Parks Canada totally ignored local accounts about the wreck being in that bay, even though hunters and pilots had been reporting sightings for ages.
RE: Fact #10 (Bosch’s Charity-Controlled Corporate Structure) – Rolex is actually fully owned by a nonprofit. It definitely doesn’t feel like it, though.
The founder of Rolex gave the company to his foundation specifically to protect its reputation and future. Since there are no shareholders to satisfy, they don’t have to chase short-term profits. Even with years-long waiting lists for popular models, they don’t ramp up production because they feel it would hurt the brand’s prestige.
I really agree. It makes sense that they operate like a for-profit company to keep money flowing. Moving away from authorized dealers toward their own boutiques has hurt their image a bit. Still, they are one of the few non-profit trusts that donate massive amounts to social causes without any hidden agendas. It’s easy to forget how much they give away because the gap between retail and resale prices makes the brand seem more commercial than it really is.
RE: Fact #7 (America’s Cheap Whiskey Drinking Peak) – Just think about people doing things like blacksmithing or operating heavy industrial machinery while being buzzed the whole time.
My maternal grandfather was a long-haul trucker. I don’t recall ever seeing him without a beer in one hand and a flask in his shirt pocket, right next to a pack of Camel unfiltered cigarettes. He was a quiet, violent man who hated his kids and terrified my grandmother. He was in tons of accidents, which I assume was just the reality of life before modern safety regulations. It’s a miracle he lived to 65 and never killed anyone else. It’s wild to think that being drunk on the job was just normal back then.
RE: Fact #21 (HMS Terror’s Hunter-Led Discovery) – I used to fly helicopters in the Canadian Arctic, specifically around Cambridge Bay. I spent years flying over that area and often wondered about the HMS Terror, but I never spotted anything. It is wild to think that if I had just flown a couple kilometers further north, I might have seen the wreck years before it was officially found.
What kind of survival gear did you have to carry in case you had to land in the backcountry?
RE: Fact #22 (Hitler’s Fake Suicide Mission Prank) – Hanfstaengl didn’t see the humor in it at all, he was genuinely worried Hitler was trying to have him killed. He was already having political disagreements with him. Apparently, a pilot tipped him off about the ‘engine trouble, ‘ which gave him the chance to defect to Switzerland.
RE: Fact #15 (Seth MacFarlane’s Young Showrunner Record) – His senior thesis at RISD was essentially the Family Guy prototype. It had a fat guy named Larry and a talking dog named Steve. Fox saw it and signed him for a pilot when he was 24. A whole empire started from a college project.
I had no clue that was a school project. I remember catching it on Cartoon Network a couple of years before it hit the main lineup, back when it was just being shopped around as a pilot.
Good Will Hunting started as a school assignment, too. Matt Damon thought he was going to get a bad grade because he turned in the first act of a movie script instead of the one-act play he was supposed to write.
It also aired on Cartoon Network.
RE: Fact #22 (Hitler’s Fake Suicide Mission Prank) – He was definitely in the wrong century. He would have fit right in with the Jackass crew.
RE: Fact #48 (Pink Duck Carries Chicken Risk) – Calling for ‘medium’ is common, so the headline seems a bit dumb. Even though medium doesn’t guarantee the temp has increased throughout, it usually ensures it’s safer.
Salmonella needs 158 degrees F for two minutes to be fully destroyed, which is well past medium. The only reason more people don’t get sick is that properly raised farm ducks usually aren’t carrying it in the first place. Guidelines are built on the assumption that the meat is definitely infected, but it’s still a gamble.
RE: Fact #16 (Kanzi’s Vocal Symbols Sounded Distorted) – >But in a scenario where it was obvious that the researcher did not know the whereabouts of the treat, the ape would quickly point to the right cup. Johns Hopkins assistant professor Chris Krupenye noted “The results also suggest apes can simultaneously hold two conflicting world views in their mind. They know exactly where the food is, and at the same time, they know that their partner’s view of the same situation is missing that information” and that “this so-called theory of mind supports many of the capacities” behind advanced human capabilities and social organization and “demonstrates the rich mental foundations that humans and other apes share”. That is honestly impressive.
RE: Fact #5 (Anne Hathaway’s Painful Stage Role) – The writers of “Married With Children” wrote Katey Sagal’s real-life pregnancy into the show. But when she suffered a stillbirth at seven months, they decided to scrap the storyline as a ‘dream’ rather than make her keep acting with an infant.
I really admire that. ‘It was all a dream’ is usually lazy writing, but it’s a massive challenge to pull off. The writers choosing to toss a plot line rather than make her go through that pain was incredibly compassionate.
RE: Fact #46 (Lavender Scare Purged Gay Workers) – And one of the biggest drivers of that whole movement was a closeted gay man who eventually died of AIDS.
RE: Fact #45 (Outlaws Beheaded Hells Angels Bikers) – The detail about the “beer drinkers” versus the members who preferred marijuana is even more ridiculous. A civil war over beer and pot resulting in eleven deaths is just insane.
These guys really lacked any imagination. Drinking beer and smoking pot are both fun. Maybe I should have been their leader and just united everyone under a shared goal of having a good time.
Sort of. Both groups were in a fierce competition over manufacturing and selling meth since ’67 and LSD from ’79 onward. There was a lot of bad blood between them that fueled those murders, along with a string of unsolved killings. My uncles were in a motorcycle club, and the intense loyalty they had for each other was something else to grow up around.
RE: Fact #27 (Yakult Ladies Check Elderly Customers) – They visit schools, too. A group came to my son’s elementary school to give a presentation on the health benefits of their drink.
They must have a sweet deal with the government to be allowed to come into schools for sales. They come to all my schools and sell stuff in the teachers’ lounge.
RE: Fact #5 (Anne Hathaway’s Painful Stage Role) – Jenna Fischer mentioned on her podcast that she was terrified when the writers included her real-life pregnancy for Pam, because she was constantly worried that something could go wrong.