1 Napoleon Saved Marie Louise First
During the difficult birth of his son in 1811, French Emperor Napoleon was asked whether doctors should prioritize his wife, Empress Marie Louise, or the child, and he ordered them to save the empress. Both Marie Louise and the baby survived, and his son, Napoleon Francois Joseph Charles Bonaparte, received the title of King of Rome. The ordeal traumatized Napoleon, who said, “I had rather never have any more children than see her suffer so much again.”
2. Argentina became the catalyst for soccer’s yellow and red card system during the 1966 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal against England at Wembley. West German referee Rudolf Kreitlein expelled Argentine captain Antonio Rattin after a second caution, but Rattin initially refused to leave amid language problems and eventually left the field escorted by police. After the confusion, former English referee and FIFA referee committee head Ken Aston proposed universally understood yellow cards for cautions and red cards for expulsions. FIFA introduced the system at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico.
3. Canada’s $1 coin is commonly called the “loonie” because it depicts a loon on the reverse. When Canada introduced a new $2 coin featuring a polar bear in 1996, Canadian MP Jack Iyerak Anawak proposed calling it “Nanuq,” an Inuit word for polar bear, but the suggestion went largely unnoticed. Canadians instead embraced “toonie,” a combination of “two” and “loonie,” and the nickname became so popular that the Royal Canadian Mint secured the rights to it in 2006.
4. Wild animals in the African savanna were twice as likely to flee from recordings of calm human conversations as from lion growls or hunting sounds. Researchers placed speakers and cameras near waterholes in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park and analyzed more than 15,000 videos. The response appeared in 18 of 19 observed species, or about 95%, supporting the idea that wildlife recognizes humans as a “super-predator.” Animals also fled 40% faster after hearing human voices than after hearing lions.
5. As Pope Leo XIV still plays Wordle and Words With Friends with his brother during their daily phone calls (as of September 2026), continuing a routine they had before his election. His brother, a man named John Prevost, said they were already playing the word games together before Leo entered the conclave that elected him pope in May 2025.
6 Strength Training Rebuilds Aging Bones
We gradually lose bone mass as we age, with bone loss averaging about 1% per year after age 40. Fortunately, strength training can slow this loss and even build new bone. When we lift weights, the pulling and pushing forces stress our bones, stimulating bone-forming cells and producing stronger, denser bones.
7. Under Colorado law, HOAs cannot prohibit owners of detached single-family homes from establishing vegetable gardens in their front, back, or side yards. SB23-178 took effect on August 7, 2023, requiring HOA landscaping rules to permit such gardens in all three areas. This does not apply to condominiums or attached homes that share one or more walls.
8. An ERAP2 genetic variant that helped people survive the Black Death is also a known risk factor for the autoimmune condition Crohn’s disease. Researchers studying ancient DNA found that people with two copies of the protective variant were about 40% more likely to survive the plague than those without it. The variant helped immune cells kill the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis more effectively.
9. Canadian comedian and television personality Mark Rowswell, better known by his stage name Dashan, became one of China’s best-known foreign entertainers and has often been described as the country’s most famous foreigner, despite remaining largely unknown in North America. His breakthrough came in 1988, when his fluent Mandarin performance in a comedy skit on CCTV’s New Year’s Gala, watched by an estimated 550 million people, propelled him to national stardom overnight. He later studied the traditional Chinese comedy form xiangsheng and, in December 1989, became the first foreigner formally accepted into its strict performance hierarchy.
10. Mississippi has no statewide open-container law, making it technically legal for a driver to drink alcohol while operating a vehicle as long as the driver does not become impaired. Drunk driving remains illegal, with a blood alcohol limit of 0.08% for adults, 0.04% for commercial drivers, and 0.02% for minors. Mississippi is the only U.S. state without a statewide law banning open alcohol containers in motor vehicles.
11 Sioux Refused Black Hills Payment
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court awarded the Sioux nations $122 million for the taking of the Black Hills in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians. The tribes refused the money because accepting it would extinguish their claim to the land, so the award remained in a federal account collecting interest and is now worth more than $1 billion. The dispute traces back to the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which protected the Black Hills from white settlement before a gold rush and a disputed 1877 cession transferred the land to the United States.
12. In November 2009, a 52-year-old New Jersey construction worker named Americo Lopes tried to keep a $38.5 million Mega Millions jackpot that his five coworkers said belonged to their workplace lottery pool at Berto Construction Inc. Lopes claimed he bought the winning ticket for himself, told his boss he was leaving for foot surgery that he reportedly never had, and then filed for unemployment after collecting $17,433,966 after taxes. In 2012, a jury unanimously rejected his story and awarded each of his five coworkers $4 million from the jackpot’s $24 million cash-option value.
13. Turkish coffee culture dates back roughly 500 years to the 16th-century Ottoman era, and fortune-telling from the leftover grounds became part of the tradition. It started in the Ottoman harem not just as magic but as a clever social loophole. Women used the “fortunes” in the cups as a safe excuse to gossip, vent, and talk about taboo subjects without getting in trouble.
14. American planter and politician Robert Carter III, influenced by his Baptist beliefs, carried out the largest manumission, or voluntary freeing of enslaved people, in U.S. history before the Civil War, gradually emancipating more than 500 people he enslaved. He began the process by recording a Deed of Gift in Northumberland County, Virginia, in 1791, despite strong opposition from relatives and neighbors. Carter later settled many of the freed people on land he gave them and offered wages to those who continued working for him.
15. Despite widespread beliefs that penis size varies substantially by race, professionally measured scientific studies have found little evidence that race or ethnicity meaningfully predicts an individual’s penis size. A 2015 review based on measurements by health professionals found no indication of differences between ethnicities.
16 Evocatio Invited Enemy Gods Away
The Romans practiced a siege ritual called “evocatio,” formally inviting an enemy city’s guardian deity to abandon it for the Roman side, usually with the promise of a better-endowed cult or more lavish temple. The ritual doubled as psychological warfare by threatening the enemy’s sense of divine protection while also mitigating the otherwise sacrilegious looting of religious images after conquest. One recorded example occurred at Veii in 396 BC, when the Romans transferred the cult of Juno Regina to Rome.
17. In 1984, during a filming delay for the CBS series Cover Up, American actor and model Jon-Erik Hexum tried to lighten the mood by leaving one blank cartridge in a .44 Magnum revolver, spinning the cylinder, placing the gun against his right temple, and pulling the trigger. Although the cartridge contained no bullet, the muzzle blast fractured a quarter-sized piece of his skull and drove it into his brain, causing massive hemorrhaging. Doctors performed five hours of surgery, but Hexum was declared brain dead six days after the accident, at age 26. His heart, kidneys, corneas, and skin were subsequently donated for transplantation.
18. You may not wake during a nighttime house fire because the human brain does not reliably respond to odors during sleep, even when the smell is strong. A 1997 study from Irondale Fire and Rescue Service exposed 10 sleeping adults to a smoke-like odor, but only two woke up, while none woke up to a strong citrus smell. Brown University researchers later tested six sleeping adults with peppermint and the noxious chemical pyridine and again found that odors rarely roused them, especially during deep sleep. Audible tones proved far more effective.
19. Byzantine Emperor Basil I died in 886 A.D. after a hunting accident in which his belt became caught in a deer’s antlers and he was allegedly dragged 16 miles (25 km) through the woods. An attendant finally freed Basil by cutting him loose with a knife, but the emperor suspected the man of trying to assassinate him and had him executed. Basil contracted a fever after the accident and died.
20. Greek Cynic philosopher Crates of Thebes was known for entering his friends’ homes uninvited and helping reconcile family members, even when they were “deeply at odds.” Rather than scolding them harshly, he corrected them gently and without accusation. The habit earned Crates the nickname “Door-Opener,” and Athenians reportedly received him gladly and with honor.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Silk Moths Cannot Survive Alone
The domestic silk moth, Bombyx mori, no longer exists in the wild and is entirely dependent on humans for survival. Humans domesticated it from the wild silk moth Bombyx mandarina in China more than 5,000 years ago, then selectively bred it for silk production. Over millennia, it lost its native camouflage pigments and ability to fly, leaving males dependent on human help to find mates.
22. During the Greco-Italian War, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini reportedly expected to reach Athens in just five days, calling it “a coffee walk.” Instead, Greek forces counterattacked on November 14, 1940, forcing Italian troops to retreat. After 103 days of fighting, Greek cartoonist K. Bezos depicted a waiter telling an Italian, “Tell Mussolini the coffee he ordered in Athens is frozen.”
23. People of Nigerian ancestry in the United States have exceptionally high educational attainment, with about 61% of adults age 25 and older holding a bachelor’s degree or higher. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2008-2012 data put the national rate at just 28.5%, making the Nigerian rate more than twice as high. Among the five ancestry groups examined, Nigerians ranked as the most educated, and 52% of employed Nigerians worked in management, business, science, or arts occupations.
24. Medieval football could involve an unlimited number of players, with matches running through towns and villages and markers placed at opposite ends of a town. Opposing mobs struggled to drag an inflated pig’s bladder to their goal, and by some accounts they could use virtually any means as long as they did not cause manslaughter or murder. The games declined sharply after the Highway Act 1835 banned football on public highways, although versions still survive in several British towns.
25. On August 12, 1990, while waiting for a flat tire to be repaired before her fossil expedition left South Dakota’s Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, American explorer and fossil collector Sue Hendrickson decided to explore cliffs the group had never checked. She found small bone fragments, then spotted larger bones protruding from a cliff, leading to the excavation of a T. rex skeleton that proved more than 90% complete by bulk. The specimen was named “Sue” after Hendrickson and is now permanently displayed at Chicago’s Field Museum.
RE: Fact #11 (Sioux Refused Black Hills Payment) – The Arikara were the original inhabitants, not the Lakota. The Sioux arrived from Minnesota, pushed the local tribes out, and then got bitter when the Americans did the same thing to them.
RE: Fact #21 (Silk Moths Cannot Survive Alone) – Domesticated animals don’t really exist in the wild anyway. You could say the same thing about sheep or cows.
Cows could absolutely survive in the wild; most domesticated animals could. Sheep are the only ones that really can’t because of their wool and predators.
RE: Fact #39 (Royal Navy Codebooks Carried Lead) – The issues with this method are likely why U-boat Enigma codebooks in WWII were often printed on paper and with inks that would dissolve easily in water.
I was wondering why they didn’t just design them to dissolve instead of weighing them down.
RE: Fact #12 (Lopes Owed Coworkers Lottery Millions) – Just to be clear, he ended up in the hole because he had to pay $4 million to each of his five coworkers. Since he took the $24 million cash option, $4 million per person sounds like a fair split, but his take-home after taxes was only about $17.4 million. By paying them back, he basically ended up covering their tax burden too, which left him with less than what his actual share would have been.
Not quite. The taxes were just misapplied at the start. It would get settled with updated paperwork, and the plaintiffs would get their own 1099 forms with taxes withheld. He could then file for an overpayment and likely claw back a significant amount from the IRS the following year.
RE: Fact #34 (Olympic Village Became Federal Prison) – It sounds more like they built a prison and just tried to pass it off as an Olympic Village. They could have at least tried to make it look a bit nicer.
Exactly. It’s one thing to repurpose facilities after the Games, but this was clearly a half-baked effort to turn a prison design into athlete housing. The village should have been the easiest thing to convert, since it’s just apartment blocks.
Usually, it’s the other way around: they build condos and let the athletes use them first. I’ve been to a couple of Olympics, and that’s the standard. They don’t just hope for a post-Games use; they plan for it.
RE: Fact #12 (Lopes Owed Coworkers Lottery Millions) – Imagine winning the lottery and then immediately speedrunning losing five friends and getting slapped with a massive lawsuit.
I don’t get why he stayed in the country. If I were going to rob my friends like that, I would have just headed back to Portugal. He was an immigrant, so if he was just here to make money, he could have lived like royalty back home with $24 million. Honestly, he could have lived like a king almost anywhere.
Growing up in New Jersey and living in Europe now, I can say for sure the first thing I’d do with that kind of money is get the hell out of New Jersey.
RE: Fact #45 (Apple Licensed iOS From Cisco) – Cisco actually had a phone called the iPhone in the works, and Apple just moved ahead and released their own phone with that name anyway, even though they knew they didn’t own the rights to it.
I found that out while looking into it, too! It’s such a classic Apple move. Steve Jobs basically just rang up Cisco and said they were going to use the name iPhone and asked if they could have the trademark, without even making an offer for it.
RE: Fact #9 (Dashan Became China’s Foreign Superstar) – Dashan is so compelling to Chinese audiences because his command of the language is just stellar. His grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation are so perfect you literally can’t tell he isn’t a native speaker. On top of that, he performs actual xiangsheng, which is packed with complex wordplay. It’s like imagining a foreigner who has the exact same accent and quick-witted comedy style as Lee Mack; that’s the level of respect many Chinese people have for him.
I’d actually push back on one point: I think Dashan’s Chinese is better than the average native speaker. The art form he performs requires such a deep command of language and culture that it’s not really attainable for your average person.
RE: Fact #14 (Robert Carter III Freed Hundreds) – I kind of miss when the wealthy used to flex on each other with charitable works like, ‘I built a library, ‘ ‘I built a hospital, ‘ or ‘I gave 500 people their freedom.’
RE: Fact #38 (Suffolk Preserves Humanity’s Earliest Firemaking) – Interestingly, Suffolk and East Anglia were some of the most densely populated rural areas in Europe up until industrialization and major international trade took over.
Fun fact: the people in Norfolk still consider it quite densely populated.
That makes sense, especially when you compare it to the Low Countries. They have very similar geography, climate, and soil fertility, and both are essentially the surviving parts of Doggerland.
I recall that during the medieval period, Norwich was the second largest town in England after London, mostly due to sheep farming and trade with Europe.
RE: Fact #6 (Strength Training Rebuilds Aging Bones) – Fun fact: the body has a hard time distinguishing between calcium and lead, so it stores lead in the bones. As we age and lose bone mass, that lead is released back into the bloodstream, which can be harmful, especially for those who had high lead exposure as kids.
That explains why our boomer parents seem to have gotten dumber
I remember seeing that Gen X is the generation that was most exposed to lead, so that should be interesting.
I started reading and thought I could end up with a metal skeleton like Wolverine, then I remembered his healing factor is the only thing keeping the metal poisoning from killing him.
RE: Fact #37 (Trojan Horse Absent From Iliad) – The Epic Cycle consists of: Cypria – The events leading to the war. Iliad – The conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon, and the battles with Hector. Aethiopis – More battles, including the death of Achilles. Little Iliad – The dispute over Achilles’ armor, the siege, and the Greeks building the wooden horse. Iliupersis – The sack of Troy where the horse features. We only have about ten lines left, but Virgil drew heavily from this. It also involves the Greeks angering Athena. Nostoi – The return home, with some characters facing shipwrecks. Odyssey – Odysseus trying to get home. Telegony – The story of how Odysseus’ son kills him.
Maybe this is a silly question, but if those stories are lost, how do we know the synopses you listed? Are they quoted in other works?
RE: Fact #43 (Lamine Yamal Is Two Names) – His legal name is Lamine Yamal Nasraoui Ebana. Instead of just putting his surnames on his jersey, he wears the first names “Lamine Yamal” to honor the two men who supported his family through a tough financial patch.
RE: Fact #20 (Crates Walked Into Family Feuds) – It makes sense that he was a student of Diogenes. He and his wife Hipparchia lived a really simple life after she left her wealthy family to join him on the streets. Their marriage was honestly one of the most interesting and wholesome ones from that era, despite the fact that they were known for having sex in public, which was pretty shocking at the time.
RE: Fact #50 (Nacional Cacao Became Luxury Chocolate) – You can get Nacional cacao chocolate from Fortunato Chocolate up in Washington. They do mail-order, and the prices are actually normal. I don’t think they do the single-origin stuff, though; they just source from a bunch of different Peruvian farmers.
RE: Fact #15 (Penis Size Lacks Racial Differences) – Imagine your claim to fame being that you are the reference photo for microphallism on Wikipedia.
RE: Fact #4 (Savanna Animals Fear Human Voices) – Also, lions growl at each other, not at their prey. They are silent when they hunt, whereas humans tend to talk to each other.
Lions are ambush predators with low stamina, so animals are usually safe if they keep their distance. Humans with rifles can kill from a distance, so natural selection favors animals that flee or hide as soon as they sense a human.
RE: Fact #19 (Basil’s Deer Hunt Proved Fatal) – I was hoping this was about a terrible emperor given that awful death, but apparently not. He went from rags to riches and was actually well-regarded. The world is just a rough place.
I mean, he did murder the previous emperor to take the throne, so there’s that. But otherwise, he wasn’t terrible.
RE: Fact #23 (Nigerian Americans Double Degree Average) – As a Nigerian, I think the biggest reason is that education is so affordable back home. I’m a doctor who trained in Nigeria, then moved to the US. Most people coming here from Nigeria already have a degree. Since college tuition is usually cheaper than masters tuition, people often use the master’s programs to stay here and work while waiting for their permanent paperwork. A lot of Nigerians who migrate are already pretty privileged compared to the average person back home. We also just work hard because here, for the first time, that hard work actually pays off, unlike in Nigeria. It’s a frustrating country.
RE: Fact #28 (Nokia Rejected Its iPhone-Like Prototype) – People forget that there was no App Store when the iPhone launched. Instead, the plan was to use Safari to load a web app and then bookmark it as an icon on your home screen right next to the built-in apps.
RE: Fact #36 (Inoki Kicked Ali 107 Times) – “Mr. Ali, we think it’d be great if you fight a wrestler.” “Fine, but he’s not allowed to wrestle.”
Sounds like a total mess. It’s wild because it happened right at the peak of Ali’s career, just a year after the Rumble in the Jungle. There’s a claim that 1.4 billion people watched it, which is insane for 1976.
1.4 billion is the kind of number you see for modern World Cup finals. There is no way that figure is accurate.
RE: Fact #11 (Sioux Refused Black Hills Payment) – They could accomplish a lot if they accepted the money. With a billion dollars earning a conservative 5% interest, that’s only about $290 per person annually for a population of 170k. That won’t go very far toward covering healthcare, housing, or scholarships. Even if they split the principal, it’s only around $5.8k each.
RE: Fact #28 (Nokia Rejected Its iPhone-Like Prototype) – It’s not guaranteed that the iPhone would have succeeded if it launched in 2004. There were plenty of failed touchscreen attempts, even from Apple, before the iPhone came along. Mobile tech evolved so rapidly between 1998 and 2008, every generation was a massive leap in features, screens, and form factors. Some features just took longer to ripen. Cameras were around in the early 2000s, but without decent screens or a way to easily share photos, they were just gimmicks. Mid-range phones with decent cameras and connectivity didn’t really arrive until 2006. Most successful phones hit the market with the right features at the exact right moment. BlackBerry went mainstream around 2005 or 2006, just as networks could handle higher traffic and corporate users started needing email access without lugging around a laptop. You could argue that without BlackBerry paving the way, people might not have understood the value of internet and email access on a handheld. In 2004, Wi-Fi wasn’t everywhere, video streaming and social media didn’t exist, and the web was still built for desktops. By the time the iPhone dropped, all that had changed, which helped it succeed.
RE: Fact #30 (Red Dwarfs Have Never Died) – Red dwarfs can stick around for trillions of years, which is wild considering the universe hasn’t even been around for that many billions.
RE: Fact #49 (Bibasis Made Butt Kicking Competitive) – We did these in the Army! We called them butt kickers. They were usually used for discipline.
I thought butt kickers were just one foot at a time. The version described here sounds like you have to jump and kick with both, which seems way tougher.
RE: Fact #26 (Taylor Farms Recalled McDonald’s Onions) – There are claims that these farms don’t even provide basic bathroom access for the workers picking produce, leaving them to go in the fields. Taylor Farms is exactly why we need government regulations, there are enough greedy people who would happily let others suffer or die just to save a few cents.
RE: Fact #1 (Napoleon Saved Marie Louise First) – I definitely asked the nurses for all the pain medication available during my delivery. It’s a modern miracle for anyone willing and able to take it.
I told my anesthesiologist that I had originally wanted to try a natural birth, but she reminded me that it should be the happiest day of my life, so why spend it in agony? Modern medicine is a lifesaver.
RE: Fact #8 (ERAP2 Boosted Plague Survival Odds) – It feels like having two wolves inside you: your immune system and your history of illnesses, and when they aren’t fighting each other, they’re just wrecking your house.
RE: Fact #47 (Train Engineers Face Three Fatalities) – I was riding in the front car of a New York subway when someone jumped from the platform. I felt the impact and the emergency brakes slammed the train to a stop, throwing everyone from their seats. The driver jumped out of the cab screaming, kicking and punching the windows.
RE: Fact #2 (Argentina Inspired Soccer’s Card System) – They are also the reason players get sent off for covering their mouths while talking to opponents now.
And that’s why goalies are forbidden from talking to players during penalty kicks. Our legend just keeps making an impact.
RE: Fact #17 (Jon-Erik Hexum’s Blank Turned Fatal) – In basic training, one of our drill sergeants held an apple up to a rifle loaded with blanks to show us how dangerous they are at close range. It absolutely obliterated the fruit. It was a great lesson for someone like me who had zero experience with firearms.
RE: Fact #31 (Homer’s Iliad Survived Inside Mummy) – This guy must have really loved ships if he wanted to be buried with a list of them. Can’t really blame him.
RE: Fact #18 (Smoke Odors Rarely Wake Sleepers) – We had a kitchen fire downstairs, and I was lucky that my 5-year-old woke me up. The house was filled with smoke, but I didn’t wake up to it at all. It was really scary.
RE: Fact #39 (Royal Navy Codebooks Carried Lead) – I found this mentioned in an early 1900s American nautical encyclopedia, which noted that signal books had lead covers so they would sink if thrown overboard during a potential capture. The practice lasted a long time: it appears in US Navy instructions from 1863, a Royal Navy book from 1917, and the 1935 manual used in WWII. Burning was always the preferred destruction method, but the lead provided insurance if there was no time. Surviving books are rare because officers had to provide certificates of destruction. One 1917 copy actually popped up in a charity shop in Bath in 2024 and was bought by the National Museum of the Royal Navy.
It didn’t always work. In WWI, the Russians recovered codebooks thrown from the SMS Magdeburg after it ran aground in shallow water. It was an awful mistake, as they had plenty of time to burn the books in the ship’s boilers. The Russians ended up sharing a copy with Great Britain.
RE: Fact #40 (Kiidk’yaas Fell In Logging Protest) – I actually saw the golden spruce in the early 90s. It was neat in person, though it was tucked away in the forest and hard to spot from the side. Luckily, botanists took cuttings before it was destroyed, so there are plenty of clones growing around Haida Gwaii now.
RE: Fact #49 (Bibasis Made Butt Kicking Competitive) – Anyone who thought the Spartans didn’t know how to have fun was clearly wrong.
RE: Fact #45 (Apple Licensed iOS From Cisco) – Funny enough, “IOS” was also the internal name for the Nintendo Wii’s system firmware. It was a common term in the console modding scene back then, so the iPhone and iOS blowing up at the same time really confused a lot of people.
RE: Fact #19 (Basil’s Deer Hunt Proved Fatal) – 16 miles? Forget the line of succession; at that point, you just name the deer Emperor.
Pretty sure that’s more legend than fact. 16 miles is a huge distance. There is no way a deer is dragging a 150-pound human that far. Maybe 160 yards.
RE: Fact #9 (Dashan Became China’s Foreign Superstar) – That sounds like a great arrangement, being a superstar halfway across the world while being completely anonymous back home, plus having proof of your fame.
This is why I’ve always thought being a ‘not-quite-MLB-level’ pro baseball player would be the best career. You can make a great salary playing in Korea or Japan, live in a modern country, and then come home to live as a totally regular guy.
RE: Fact #33 (Adopted Siblings Were Biological Siblings) – If you look at their photos now, it’s so obvious they’re siblings, they have the exact same face. I know it’s easy to say in hindsight, but how did nobody look at them side by side while they were growing up and notice how uncanny the resemblance was?
RE: Fact #18 (Smoke Odors Rarely Wake Sleepers) – That is exactly why we have a loud alarm system on every floor and outside the bedrooms. Noise definitely works better.
I don’t know, man. I have literally slept through my own fire alarm before. It actually kind of worried me.
RE: Fact #10 (Mississippi Allows Drinking While Driving) – Missouri is another state where it’s legal for passengers to have open containers while the vehicle is moving, as long as the person behind the wheel is sober.
RE: Fact #27 (Chinatown Tours Faked Opium Dens) – People still do this with tourism, like visiting favelas in Rio de Janeiro & slums of Mumbai. It’s so messed up.
RE: Fact #7 (Colorado Protects Home Vegetable Gardens) – I ran for my HOA board specifically to fight a ridiculous rule about where we could park our bikes. I won, and it turned out this draconian policy was just one old lady’s personal vendetta. The board agreed to change it immediately. I ended up stuck doing the finances for seven years, but it was worth it to make sure my family and neighbors could park their bikes properly.
RE: Fact #35 (Teenager Drove The A Train) – They really brush over how he actually got into the driver’s seat. If he just showed up in a uniform, where was the actual driver who was supposed to be working that shift?
RE: Fact #24 (Medieval Football Had Unlimited Players) – The Discworld book Unseen Academicals is all about this and the move toward standardizing the sport.
RE: Fact #3 (Canadians Chose Toonie Over Nanuq) – Every Canadian hockey fan remembers that commercial where the Sedin twins were paid a “couple loonies” and “a toonie.” I thought it was hilarious and a total “Canadian Heritage Moment.”
As someone who really dislikes the Canucks, that was the moment I started to accept that the Sedins were actually good guys.
RE: Fact #1 (Napoleon Saved Marie Louise First) – That’s ironic, because she felt the opposite. Empress Marie Louise reportedly said, “I am the Empress; they do not care for me, but they want above all things to preserve the life of my son.” She believed the court was prepared to sacrifice her just to secure an heir.
RE: Fact #22 (Mussolini’s Athens Coffee Stayed Frozen) – The Italian military was basically a joke during World War II. Hitler had to keep diverting his own resources and soldiers just to bail them out.
RE: Fact #11 (Sioux Refused Black Hills Payment) – Other nations like the Arikara, Crow, and Kiowa all have documented histories in that area from before the Lakota moved in during the 17th and 18th centuries. Even if the treaty says it belongs to the Lakota, it was someone else’s land first. So, who is the money actually for?
RE: Fact #42 (Middle Passage Killed 1.8 Million) – I still remember watching that sea voyage in the first episode of Roots. It was absolutely brutal.
RE: Fact #18 (Smoke Odors Rarely Wake Sleepers) – I wake up to strong smells for sure. My dog pooped in the bedroom at 3 a.m. and the stink woke me up immediately.
RE: Fact #23 (Nigerian Americans Double Degree Average) – Not to mention, their entrepreneurship rates are also extremely high.
RE: Fact #29 (Microphones Accidentally Created Iconic Tone) – I’ve gotten pretty close to that tone by sweeping through a wah pedal really slowly and just leaving it at a fixed setting once it sounds right.
Yeah, it’s definitely more of a cocked-wah sound than just a microphone pointed in the wrong direction.
RE: Fact #47 (Train Engineers Face Three Fatalities) – In medical school, we had a train driver come in to speak for our environmental medicine class. He said their training tells them to apply the brakes and then rotate their chair away from the front window if they see someone on the tracks.
RE: Fact #7 (Colorado Protects Home Vegetable Gardens) – HOAs are frustrating, but it really is wild that in a country so obsessed with the idea of ‘my land, my rights, ‘ people actually put up with their rules.
The irony is that their popularity really took off during the Cold War, the exact same era that supposedly prided itself on resisting communal authority.
Like most nonsensical parts of American life, it’s rooted in racism.
RE: Fact #46 (Casso Lost Federal Witness Protection) – It’s a bit more complicated than just his prison antics. Casso was a terrible person, but he was tolerated until he told the FBI that he and Salvatore Gravano were partners in the drug trade. That would have wrecked Gravano’s testimony, made the government look like they relied on perjury, and potentially given John Gotti a new trial. Also, when he had the mob cops kill James Hydell, he was accidentally avenging the murder of Annette DiBiase, a woman Hydell had harmed. Essentially, Casso was kicked out because he was becoming a liability who would expose how the government was so obsessed with Gotti that they made a deal with someone who was arguably even worse.
RE: Fact #37 (Trojan Horse Absent From Iliad) – The Iliad and Odyssey are just two parts of the much larger Epic Cycle, but they’re the only ones that survived. The Trojan Horse is covered much more thoroughly in the other, lost stories.
RE: Fact #32 (Welles Turned Macbeth Into Voodoo) – Orson Welles said, “I wanted to give the black actors a chance to play classics, without it being funny. Or even exotic. Just…there it is. I directed Macbeth without ever giving them a reading. None of them had ever seen a Shakespearean play. And it’s extraordinary how good Shakespeare is if it’s spoken by somebody who’s never heard somebody say it before.” “When the play ended, there were so many curtain calls that finally they left the curtain open and the audience came up on stage to congratulate the actors. That was magical.”
RE: Fact #34 (Olympic Village Became Federal Prison) – >At the time of construction, the Olympic Village had 937 small cells, each holding between 2 and 4 athletes. The majority of rooms had one barred window, although some had no windows at all, and they had heavy steel doors with peepholes for use by guards after conversion to a functional prison. The Village was surrounded by concentric chain fences. The fences were sensitized and sounded alarms if touched. The only entrance to the village was a surveilled double gate.
RE: Fact #3 (Canadians Chose Toonie Over Nanuq) – “toonie” was an obvious choice. This fact doesn’t mean Canadians are against Indigenous inclusion, it’s just that the name made perfect sense.
RE: Fact #23 (Nigerian Americans Double Degree Average) – Growing up in a small Texas town during the 90s, I lived around a lot of Nigerian immigrants. The Nigerian kids honestly made the school system so much more competitive. Everyone else from that tiny town was headed to schools like Stanford, Yale, or MIT. My own Nigerian babysitter even ended up at Harvard. It definitely raised the bar for me while I was growing up.
RE: Fact #2 (Argentina Inspired Soccer’s Card System) – It was also inspired by traffic lights, and color coding became feasible once color TV arrived.
RE: Fact #5 (Pope Leo Keeps Wordle Routine) – I miss that drawing game from the early 2010s where you had to guess what the other person sketched. I was so proud of some of my drawings I took screenshots, though I never looked at them again.
RE: Fact #41 (Japan’s Earthquake Shortened The Day) – Now all those programmers have to go back and update their time-calculating code!
RE: Fact #50 (Nacional Cacao Became Luxury Chocolate) – I visited Ecuador a few years back and went to a chocolatier that claimed to sell a native variety. I’m not sure if it was the same stuff mentioned here, but it was amazing. I had some 97% dark chocolate that was incredibly smooth and rich. I’d go back just for that.
There are actually several species of Theobroma, and you can make chocolate from all of them. They just aren’t as popular because they’re harder to farm on a large scale. Cupuaçu is a type of coco that most people just eat raw.
RE: Fact #12 (Lopes Owed Coworkers Lottery Millions) – Whenever my friends and I do a group lottery pool, whoever buys the tickets sends a photo of all of them to the group so we have a record of the numbers.
RE: Fact #27 (Chinatown Tours Faked Opium Dens) – The man slams his silver-tipped cane against the cobblestones. “I demand the squalor I paid for!” His wife demurely presses a frilled, scented handkerchief against her nose.
What a waste of scented handkerchiefs, with no squalor-stench to be found!
“Sir, that ragamuffin child is neither deformed nor crippled. He is positively in vigor! This is “not” what was promised.”
RE: Fact #24 (Medieval Football Had Unlimited Players) – They still hold a game every year in Ashbourne, Derbyshire. The whole town basically goes into lockdown for it. It’s an incredible experience.
RE: Fact #28 (Nokia Rejected Its iPhone-Like Prototype) – I knew people who had those old Nokia touchscreen phones. It used a different type of screen technology, so you had to press pretty hard. Otherwise, it felt like any other phone. I remember reading about a Nokia engineer who got an iPhone for testing and realized just how doomed their company was at that point.
RE: Fact #48 (Dragonflies Hunt Mosquitoes Throughout Life) – They are actually the most successful hunters in the animal kingdom, with an incredible 95% success rate.
RE: Fact #22 (Mussolini’s Athens Coffee Stayed Frozen) – If history has taught me anything, it’s that Italy is pretty much a dead weight if you’re looking for a reliable military ally.
RE: Fact #40 (Kiidk’yaas Fell In Logging Protest) – This makes me even angrier than what happened to The Senator because this tree was truly one of a kind. It wasn’t just mindless destruction, it was premeditated vandalism. It’s like killing the only unicorn in the world to protest horse racing.
RE: Fact #7 (Colorado Protects Home Vegetable Gardens) – When I lived in Colorado, HOAs couldn’t stop you from xeriscaping or installing solar. We were the only house with white shingles that supposedly broke the ‘community guidelines, ‘ but they couldn’t touch us because it was energy-efficient. Our house temp dropped 10 degrees afterward. Also, I know the state technically claims all the water, but I knew people who kept ‘disguised’ rain barrels anyway.
RE: Fact #25 (Sue Discovery Followed Flat-Tire Delay) – It still blows my mind when they find such a well-preserved dino skeleton. I visited a museum near Calgary and it seems like most of those specimens were actually found by crews out looking for oil.