26 Taylor Farms Recalled McDonald’s Onions
On October 25, 2024, Taylor Farms announced a recall after the company was linked to an E. coli outbreak traced to raw onions served at McDonald’s. The outbreak affected 104 people and caused one death. An FDA inspection also found numerous violations in food-safety procedures at the Taylor Farms facility.
27. During the Gilded Age, “slumming” became a tourist craze in New York, with wealthy patrons paying guides for nighttime tours of Chinatown to witness urban poverty and vice. Demand for sensational sights grew so strong that guides staged them: a man named Chuck Connors employed Chinese actors to fake addiction and drug-induced stupor inside an opium den, while staged knife fights and distant gunfire added to the illusion. Visitors then returned home believing they had witnessed authentic life in Chinatown.
28. In 2004, once-dominant Finnish phone maker Nokia had both an internet-ready, large-display touchscreen smartphone prototype later described as “iPhone-like” and plans for an online app store. Former Nokia marketing manager Ari Hakkarainen said management killed the phone because touchscreen potential remained uncertain and the expensive device seemed too risky, while Nokia also rejected the app store concept.
29. The iconic guitar tone on Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” emerged by accident from an unusual microphone setup that included one mic pointing at the floor and another not properly aimed at the speaker. British guitarist Mark Knopfler played a Les Paul Junior through a Laney amplifier while engineer Neil Dorfsman tried to capture a ZZ Top-style sound, but the misplaced microphones produced something distinctive instead. Dorfsman’s team later tried the same amplifier, setup, and microphone models at the Power Station but could never perfectly recreate the sound.
30. Astronomers have never observed a red dwarf star dying because the universe has not existed long enough for any to reach an advanced stage of evolution. Their low mass allows them to burn hydrogen extremely slowly, giving some predicted lifespans of trillions of years. A red dwarf with one-tenth the Sun’s mass could keep burning for about 10 trillion years before eventually evolving toward a white dwarf.
31 Homer’s Iliad Survived Inside Mummy
An Egyptian-Spanish archaeological team found a passage from Book II of the Iliad by ancient Greek poet Homer inside a Roman-era mummy at El-Bahnasa, ancient Oxyrhynchus, in Egypt’s Minya Governorate. The fragment contains part of the “Catalogue of Ships,” which lists the Greek forces involved in the campaign against Troy. Archaeologists say the discovery highlights how widely Greek literature had spread through Roman Egypt.
32. In 1936, director Orson Welles adapted and directed Shakespeare’s Macbeth with an entirely Black cast, moving the story from Scotland to a fictional Caribbean island inspired by 19th-century Haiti. It opened on April 14 at Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre, with Haitian vodou replacing Scottish witchcraft and earning the production its common nickname, “Voodoo Macbeth.” The production became a box-office sensation and ran for ten sold-out weeks at the Lafayette, helping establish the reputation of the 20-year-old Welles.
33. In 2002, a man named Dennis Laffin and a woman named Angela Laffin adopted a baby boy named Frank after he was abandoned as a newborn in a diaper bag outside a daycare center on Staten Island. Two years later, the couple adopted a baby girl named Vicky, who had similarly been abandoned in a hospital bathroom on Staten Island. Years later, Frank and Vicky took AncestryDNA tests to learn more about their backgrounds, only for Vicky’s results to show that they shared 49 to 56% of their DNA and were actually full biological siblings.
34. For the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, organizers built the Olympic Village with the explicit plan to convert it into a federal prison after the Games, after Congress required an after-use contract for the federally funded facility. The village contained 937 small cells for two to four athletes, most with barred windows and heavy steel doors, prompting delegations from Sweden, Italy, Austria, East Germany, West Germany, and other countries to seek accommodations elsewhere. After the Olympics, the complex became FCI Ray Brook and accepted its first federal inmates later in 1980.
35. On May 8, 1993, a 16-year-old boy named Keron Thomas posed as a New York City Subway motorman and took control of an A train. Over roughly three hours, he made 85 stops along the route and transported an estimated 2,000 passengers without incident. Near the end of his run, Thomas took a curve too fast and accidentally triggered the train’s automatic emergency brakes. Unable to reset them, he required help from transit workers, setting in motion the discovery that the motorman was actually a teenager.
36 Inoki Kicked Ali 107 Times
On June 26, 1976, American undisputed heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali fought Japanese professional wrestler Antonio Inoki at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan under special rules that heavily restricted Inoki’s grappling, throwing, tackling, and kicking. Inoki responded by spending most of the 15-round fight on his back and kicking Ali’s legs 107 times while Ali mounted little offense. The judges ultimately declared the fight a draw. Ali’s left leg became badly swollen and infected, and he developed two blood clots that affected his mobility for the rest of his boxing career, with amputation discussed at one point.
37. The Trojan Horse does not appear at all in ancient Greek poet Homer’s Iliad, which ends before the Trojan War concludes, while the Odyssey mentions it only briefly. Earlier Greek works such as the Little Iliad and Sack of Troy featured the story heavily but survive only in fragments and summaries. The most detailed and familiar surviving ancient version comes from Book II of the Aeneid, written by Roman poet Virgil in the 1st century BC, which describes the Greeks hiding inside the wooden horse, entering Troy, and opening its gates for their returning army.
38. The earliest known evidence anywhere in the world of humans deliberately making fire comes from Suffolk, England, and dates to about 400,000 years ago. A 2025 study identified the evidence and described it as the earliest known example of humans creating fire rather than simply using naturally occurring flames.
39. Royal Navy signal codebooks were bound with thick lead panels so they would sink immediately if sailors threw them overboard to keep them from enemy hands. The Admiralty’s S.P. 02201 signalling instructions, issued in 1935 and used throughout World War II, specifically included this safeguard. Crews had orders to destroy a compromised codebook by fire when possible, with throwing it overboard as the second-best option.
40. Kiidk’yaas was a rare Sitka spruce on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, whose genetic mutation gave it golden needles instead of green ones, and the Haida people considered the tree sacred. In January 1997, a 47-year-old unemployed forest engineer named Grant Hadwin deliberately felled it as an act of protest against the logging industry. Hadwin claimed responsibility afterward, and the destruction provoked outrage across Canada.
41 Japan’s Earthquake Shortened The Day
The 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan was so powerful that it moved Honshu about 8 feet east, shifted Earth’s axis by an estimated 4 to 10 inches, and shortened the day by about 1.8 microseconds. The magnitude 9.0-9.1 undersea megathrust struck on March 11 and lasted about six minutes. It also caused parts of Honshu’s Pacific coast to sink by roughly a meter.
42. Between 1500 and 1866, an estimated 12.5 million enslaved Africans embarked for the Americas, but only about 10.7 million arrived alive, leaving roughly 1.8 million dead during the Middle Passage. Captives endured severe overcrowding, poor sanitation, disease, violence, and extreme heat aboard slave ships. Mortality averaged about 15 percent overall, exceeding 20 percent during the early decades of the transatlantic slave trade.
43. Spanish footballer Lamine Yamal’s familiar name is actually a compound given name made from two first names. His parents chose Lamine and Yamal to honor two family friends who helped them through severe financial hardship and paid their rent shortly before he was born. His full name is Lamine Yamal Nasraoui Ebana.
44. Samuel Adams’ Utopias 2025 reaches 30% ABV, making it the world’s strongest beer, and ABV limits make it illegal to sell in 15 U.S. states. Brewers achieve that strength through extended fermentation using specialized, alcohol-tolerant yeast strains, including those used in Champagne production. Because they use fermentation rather than distillation, Utopias remains technically classified as beer.
45. Apple did not own the iOS trademark when it adopted the name for its mobile operating system in 2010. Cisco owned the IOS trademark for its core operating system, which ran on millions of network infrastructure systems, so Apple licensed the name from Cisco. Cisco specified that the agreement covered only the trademark, not any of its technology.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 Casso Lost Federal Witness Protection
American mobster Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, a brutal Lucchese underboss who became an informant, was removed from the federal Witness Protection Program in 1998 after repeatedly breaking rules while in prison. Prosecutors cited infractions including bribing guards, assaulting inmates, associating with known felons, and making false statements. A federal judge later sentenced Casso to 455 years in prison without parole.
47. On average, U.S. locomotive engineers are involved in three fatalities over the course of a career. Because a train can require a mile or more to stop, engineers sometimes have no way to prevent a collision after a person enters the train’s path. Such incidents can leave engineers deeply traumatized, and most railways offer counseling afterward.
48. Dragonflies are voracious mosquito predators. They hunt mosquitoes both as aquatic nymphs and as flying adults. Estimates suggest an adult may eat 30 to 100 mosquitoes per day.
49. Spartan men and women competitively performed bibasis, a gymnastic dance in which they rapidly leaped from the ground and kicked their own buttocks with their heels to music. Judges counted each successful strike and awarded prizes to the most skilled dancers. An ancient epigram preserved by Pollux records a Laconian girl winning after performing the move 1,000 times, more than anyone had previously achieved.
50. In 2011, researchers rediscovered ancient Nacional cacao chocolate DNA in Peru after diseases had seemingly wiped out the prized variety in the early 20th century. In 2013, two men co-founded To’ak Chocolate and helped search for surviving old-growth Nacional trees in Ecuador. DNA testing of 47 trees revealed nine that were 100 percent pure ancient Nacional chocolate. To’ak later became famous for producing some of the world’s most expensive chocolate, including a 1.76-ounce bar priced at $490.
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.