26 Eduard Bloch Received Hitler’s Protection
In 1907, an Austrian Jewish physician named Eduard Bloch treated Adolf Hitler’s mother, Klara, for breast cancer in Linz, often charging the struggling family little or nothing. After Nazi Germany annexed Austria and closed Bloch’s medical practice in 1938, the 66-year-old doctor wrote directly to Hitler for help. Hitler called him an “Edeljude,” or “noble Jew,” and granted him special Gestapo protection, making Bloch the only Jewish resident of Linz with that status. Bloch and his wife, Emilie, sold their home at market value and immigrated to the United States in 1940, settling in the Bronx.
27. Studio interference almost forced American screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker to replace Se7en’s bleak ending, which involved Tracy’s severed head arriving in a box. After Penta Film demanded a more mainstream conclusion, Walker produced 13 drafts, including one in which Tracy survived. New Line Cinema later sent director David Fincher the original script by mistake, and Fincher refused to direct the revised version. Support from the production president and Brad Pitt ultimately helped preserve the ending released in 1995.
28. In 1991, a 14-year-old boy named Leland Harold “Trey” Cooley was killed by a stray bullet that took an extremely unlikely path while watching a shooting competition at a Dallas gun club. A pistol accidentally fired a second round upward during recoil, allowing the bullet to escape through flaws in the range’s safety barriers. The bullet passed through multiple walls, changed direction after striking a ceiling tile, and then hit Cooley. Investigators used ballistic markings, laser measurements, and computer reconstruction to trace its route, and the case later became the subject of a Forensic Files episode titled “The Magic Bullet.”
29. In 2006, students, faculty, and alumni at Gallaudet University, a Washington, DC, university for deaf students, protested the appointment of Jane Fernandes as its next president. Critics claimed that protesters considered Fernandes “not deaf enough” because she was born deaf but did not learn American Sign Language until adulthood. Protesters argued that she lacked the charisma to lead the global deaf community. Students occupied Hall Memorial Building, police arrested 133 protesters on October 13, and more than 4,000 supporters marched to the US Capitol eight days later. On October 29, Gallaudet’s Board of Trustees withdrew Fernandes’s appointment before she took office.
30. Ancient Greek and Roman thinkers assumed that enslaved people would lie in court to please their masters. Athenian law therefore required authorities to torture enslaved witnesses before accepting their testimony, while the Romans held a similar belief. Because masters could punish them, lawmakers believed slaves would otherwise say whatever protected their owners.
31 Langer Declared North Dakota Independent
In 1934, American politician William “Wild Bill” Langer, then governor of North Dakota, was convicted of conspiring to defraud the federal government after his administration collected political contributions from highway employees paid through federal relief programs. When the North Dakota Supreme Court ordered him removed from office, Langer signed a Declaration of Independence for the state, declared martial law in Bismarck, and barricaded himself inside the governor’s mansion. He relented after his own officers refused to recognize his authority. An appeals court overturned his conviction in 1935, a later retrial acquitted him, and voters elected him governor again in 1936.
32. The invasive spotted lanternfly prefers the tree of heaven, which is itself one of North America’s worst invasive plants. As it feeds on the tree’s sap, the insect may absorb quassinoid compounds and use them as a chemical defense against birds. The tree’s wide distribution has also helped the lanternfly spread outside China, reaching 17 eastern states after first appearing in the United States in 2014.
33. Denmark farms about 60% of its land, the second-highest proportion in the world after Bangladesh. Despite dedicating most of the country to agriculture, the sector produces only 0.9% of Denmark’s GDP, compared with an EU average of 1.6%.
34. Roman London remained largely abandoned for more than 400 years after the Roman Empire withdrew from Britain in the early 400s. Rather than occupy the crumbling walled city, early medieval Londoners built Lundenwic around present-day Covent Garden, where it flourished as an international trading town for around 250 years. Viking raids drove residents from Lundenwic by the 880s, and Saxon King Alfred reestablished Roman London as a fortified town in 886 to help defend against further attacks.
35. In Finland, about one in five people carries a gene defect associated with at least one Finnish heritage disease, and roughly one in 500 children is born affected. The group includes 36 rare genetic disorders that occur more frequently among ethnic Finns because of founder effects and genetic isolation. Researchers partly trace this pattern to a population bottleneck among the ancestors of modern Finns about 4,000 years ago, which may have left only two surviving ancestral male lineages. Because most defects are autosomal recessive, two parents carrying the same mutation have a 1 in 4 chance of having an affected child.
36 Vatican Trains Priests In Exorcism
The Catholic Church still authorizes exorcisms for Christians it believes are victims of demonic possession. Canon law permits only an ordained priest or higher prelate to perform a solemn exorcism, and the local bishop must grant permission after a thorough medical examination rules out mental illness or personality disorders. The Vatican also offers an exorcism course, which opened to members of other Christian denominations for the first time in 2019. Priests follow procedures from the Roman Ritual, which the Vatican revised in 1999, using prayers, a cross, and holy water.
37. Dolly Parton wrote her first song at age 5 and began playing homemade instruments by age 7. By age 10, she was performing on local radio and television. In 1959, when Parton was 13, Johnny Cash introduced her during her first performance at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry.
38. Dogs can detect human stress through sweat and breath, and the odor can negatively affect their emotional state. In a 2024 University of Bristol study, researchers exposed 18 dogs to samples from unfamiliar people who had completed stressful math and public-speaking tasks or relaxing activities. After smelling the stress samples, the dogs approached an ambiguously placed food bowl more slowly, suggesting they expected it to be empty.
39. Some modern humans carry DNA from ancient human groups that scientists have never identified or genetically sequenced. In 2020, two geneticists named Arun Durvasula and Sriram Sankararaman analyzed four West African populations and found evidence that their ancestors interbred with one such archaic group. Their models estimated that this “ghost population” diverged from the lineage leading to modern humans and Neanderthals between 360,000 and 1.02 million years ago. It may have contributed between 2% and 19% of the ancestry in the populations studied, leaving its existence detectable only through their DNA.
40. Severe bruising or other trauma can leave a long-lasting or permanent skin discoloration that doctors call hemosiderin staining. When damaged capillaries leak, blood pools in the tissue, and the body breaks down red blood cells, releasing their iron. The iron forms hemosiderin, a protein whose rusty color can turn the affected skin dark brown or black. Most injury-related staining eventually fades, sometimes taking more than a year, but some pigmentation becomes permanent.
41 Germany Uses One Alternative-Medicine License
In Germany, non-physicians who independently provide treatments such as homeopathy, osteopathy, or acupuncture must obtain a Heilpraktiker license. Candidates need no formal education or regulated training, but health authorities require them to pass an examination covering anatomy, physiology, pathology, psychiatry, and relevant laws. Germany does not conduct separate state board examinations for individual alternative therapies, so the license permits practitioners to use any unconventional method within their legal boundaries.
42. According to 2025 United Nations data, Nigeria had the world’s lowest life expectancy at 54.9 years. Chad followed at 55.2 years and the Central African Republic at 57.7, while the global average stood at 73.7 years. Experts linked Nigeria’s position to infectious diseases, poor access to quality health care, health worker strikes, insecurity, poverty, and environmental pollution.
43. Large-scale capture for royal hunting became one of the main reasons cheetahs disappeared from India. Mughal rulers caught wild cheetahs, tamed them, and trained them to chase game while repeatedly removing cubs from the wild. Some records estimate that Mughal emperor Akbar collected between 9,000 and 10,000 cheetahs during his reign from 1556 to 1605. In 1947 an Indian maharaja, Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo, shot the last three confirmed wild Asiatic cheetahs.
44. Polish-born American inventor Henry Orenstein survived five Nazi concentration camps before immigrating to the United States after World War II. He became a successful toy manufacturer, secured more than 100 patents, and convinced Hasbro to buy the Diaclone and Micro Change toys and repackage them as Transformers. Orenstein later patented an under-the-table camera system that revealed players’ face-down cards to television audiences, helping transform televised poker. In 1996, while in his 70s, he won $130,000 and a World Series of Poker bracelet in the $5,000 seven-card stud tournament.
45. Bats use a built-in neural mechanism to keep their intense echolocation calls from making them deaf. A 1975 study of little brown bats found that a tiny muscle in their ear contracts the exact millisecond they emit their high-pitched shriek and relaxes just in time to catch the returning echo. This precise timing allows bats to hear the echoes they need for navigation and hunting.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 Ice Cube Removed Rogers Theme
In 1990, shortly after leaving N.W.A., American rapper Ice Cube used a sample/parody of the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood theme at the beginning of “A Gangsta’s Fairytale.” Fred Rogers objected and, according to Ice Cube, sued over the unauthorized use. Rogers received about 5 cents for every copy of AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted sold until Ice Cube removed the clip from later releases.
47. In May 2016, Belgian professional cyclist Stig Broeckx suffered severe brain damage when two motorbikes ran into the descending peloton during the Tour of Belgium. His heart temporarily stopped, doctors placed him in an induced coma, and later medical updates described him as minimally conscious with no hope of recovery. His family transferred him to a pioneering coma center in Liege, and by 2019 he could walk with a cane and cycle recreationally. Broeckx had lost all memory of the five years before the accident, so he searched the internet to learn about his own professional cycling career.
48. Some Norwegian dairy goats carry a naturally occurring mutation at codon 32 of the PRNP gene that stops them from producing normal prion protein. Goats inheriting the mutation from both parents had no detectable prion protein, unlike virtually every other mammal studied, yet remained healthy and showed no obvious physical abnormalities. Because prion diseases depend on a host’s normal prion protein, researchers predicted that these goats would resist diseases such as scrapie. The goats could now provide useful models for prion research and help produce prion-free biological products.
49. Doctors sometimes use a medication called adenosine to “reset” the heart that has abnormal rhythms in excess of 200 beats per minute. Given as a rapid intravenous injection, the drug temporarily blocks electrical conduction through the atrioventricular, or AV, node. This can produce several seconds of ventricular asystole, effectively pausing the heartbeat, before a normal rhythm resumes. The body clears adenosine almost immediately because its half-life lasts less than 10 seconds.
50. In 1957, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev set a goal of tripling the USSR’s meat production within three years. Communist official Alexei Larionov, head of the Ryazan Obkom, promised to do it in one year, and authorities reported meeting the 1959 target by slaughtering all that year’s calves and much of the dairy and breeding stock, seizing privately owned cattle, and buying meat from neighboring regions. The state named Larionov a Hero of Socialist Labour in December 1959, but production plunged from 150,000 tons to 30,000 tons in 1960 after the mass slaughter reduced cattle numbers by 65 percent. Officials dismissed him that September, and he died the following month amid rumors of suicide.
RE: Fact #23 (Richard’s Ransom Drained England’s Churches) – Henry VI wanted that massive ransom because he needed the funds to secure Sicily, which was allied with Richard. Richard had famously torn down Duke Leopold of Austria’s banner during the Siege of Acre. The French were also heavily involved, wanting Richard’s brother John to take the throne, with John planning to hand over Évreux to the French in exchange for their support.
RE: Fact #11 (Iliad Fragment Accompanied Egyptian Mummy) – I had no idea people were still being mummified in Egypt as late as the fourth or fifth century AD.
This specific mummy was technically Roman since Rome controlled Egypt then, but the Romans were huge fans of Egyptian culture and kept the mummification tradition going for a bit longer.
Ancient Egyptian religion actually hung around in a modified Greek form until Emperor Theodosius ordered the destruction of all pagan temples.
Here is a simplified timeline of Ancient Egypt: – Old Kingdom to 1st Intermediate Period – Middle Kingdom – 2nd Intermediate Period – New Kingdom to 3rd Intermediate Period – Greek/Ptolemaic Egypt to Roman Egypt So yeah, this is from the Roman period, which is way different from the “Ancient Egypt” most people picture.
RE: Fact #26 honestly not surprised. One of Hitlers famous photos has him with his favorite child (his words, not mine); a little jewish girl. If memory serves, her and her family were spared and protected on his orders. It would not surprise me if he spared and protected more than was recorded in the history books.
RE: Fact #15 (Junior Bridgeman Built Fast-Food Empire) – He was a pretty sharp businessman if you read into his history. He sold off some restaurants, picked up a Coca-Cola bottling company, and teamed up with others to buy aluminum factories. He even bought Ebony and Jet when they went bankrupt. His son is now the CEO of the restaurant group, and his daughter runs Ebony and Jet.
RE: Fact #5 (Anchor Chain Rust Steals Oxygen) – Enclosed spaces are incredibly hazardous, and the threat of hypoxia is terrifying if you know what to look for. You walk in, collapse seconds later, and unless there’s a crew nearby with SCBA gear ready, you’re pretty much gone.
Rotting potatoes are just as dangerous for the same reason. It’s something that really gives me nightmares.
RE: Fact #35 (Finnish Bottleneck Concentrated Rare Diseases) – Isn’t that wild? You get desperate and sleep with your cousin once, and 4, 000 years later everyone is still dealing with it.
RE: Fact #44 (Orenstein Invented Poker’s Hidden-Card Camera) – Talk about a convenient turn of events, inventing the under-the-table camera and then going on to win a poker tournament.
RE: Fact #2 (Dolly Parton Invested Whitney’s Millions) – I remember hearing a radio interview where she said she actually preferred Whitney Houston’s version of the song. That’s such a classy move from someone who knows who they are and doesn’t need to be petty or jealous. RIP to a legend.
That is what real confidence looks like. When you know you don’t have anything to prove, you can genuinely celebrate someone else’s success, even if that success involves “beating” you.
Dolly was always incredibly secure. She never felt threatened because she wasn’t into competition, she stayed in her own lane, knew her worth, and didn’t feel the need to put others down. Almost every interaction she had with other artists was positive. I don’t think she ever had drama with anyone; if someone insulted her, she either ignored it or responded with pure class. I love that famous story where she was asked about the ‘dumb blonde’ stereotype and replied, ‘I’m not offended by all the blonde jokes because I’m not dumb, and I also know that I’m not blonde.’
She’s definitely said that a few times. I saw an old interview where she mentioned it, and she brought it up again in a recent BBC documentary. What’s great about Dolly is that if you listen to her across 40 years, her core opinions haven’t changed. Her politics feel genuine, her music isn’t just about marketing, and her confidence seems natural. She’s been a remarkable person from the start.
RE: Fact #22 (Lift Signs Underestimate Modern Passengers) – Elevators define their limits in kilograms, and the passenger count is really just for show. For two men and two women, the math is not actually that far off.
Schindler elevators usually set it at 80 kg. It has probably been a long time since they picked that number, though, because the old elevator from the 60s and the new one they installed last year both have the same ratings.
RE: Fact #13 (Russell Crowe Recommended Hugh Jackman) – All roads eventually led him to playing a priest on a Vespa in that exorcism movie. He definitely made the right career moves.
RE: Fact #34 (Alfred Reoccupied Abandoned Roman London) – By the time Napoleon reached Rome, the population was less than 20% of what it had been at the height of the Roman Empire over 1, 600 years earlier.
RE: Fact #19 (Marcus Schrenker Faked Death Midflight) – What a complete idiot. He messed up almost every part of that plan.
I remember it differently, I thought he planned to have the plane crash into the ocean on autopilot, but it just ran out of fuel too early.
If I recall, he stashed a motorcycle in the woods to reach the campsite after parachuting. It’s strange; he had some skills, but his whole approach felt like something a 14-year-old would think is clever. Trying to disappear with that kind of mindset is exactly why he got caught. What was his long-term plan, just riding the rails like a Depression-era hobo?
RE: Fact #48 (Prion-Free Goats Remain Apparently Healthy) – This is so interesting. Usually, when we knock out that gene in mice, they end up with demyelination disorders, so it is wild that these goats are living healthy lives.
RE: Fact #15 (Junior Bridgeman Built Fast-Food Empire) – Bridgeman even made his managers put in time at the drive-thru, since he saw that as the heart of any fast food place.
RE: Fact #36 (Vatican Trains Priests In Exorcism) – If you look at the updates to the Roman Ritual throughout the 20th century, you can see the advice getting more specific about the dangers of exorcism and the importance of referring the mentally ill to medical professionals. It makes sense that the requirements have become much stricter than they were a couple of centuries ago.
RE: Fact #18 (Dolly Parton’s Induction Inspired Rockstar) – Dolly is one of the few celebrities I actually wanted to meet.
RE: Fact #35 (Finnish Bottleneck Concentrated Rare Diseases) – This isn’t unique to Finland at all. It’s the founder effect, where mutations concentrate in small groups isolated by geography, culture, or history. You see the same thing with Tyrosinemia Type 1 in Quebec or Ellis-van Creveld syndrome among the Amish.
RE: Fact #40 (Bruises Can Permanently Stain Skin) – I definitely have a dark spot from a bad hip pointer I got back when I was playing rugby. It has been there for over 20 years now, even though the skin never broke.
RE: Fact #3 (Clela Rorex Licensed Same-Sex Marriage) – It is wild that people actually took the time to write or call their county clerk over this. Five couples they didn’t even know got married, and they were so bothered by it they felt the need to complain.
If even a few same-sex couples get married, people might eventually realize that their local communities didn’t actually collapse or get struck down by a higher power. Once that sets in, they might realize all the fear-mongering about same-sex relationships being dangerous was totally overblown. Some might even become tolerant, and we can’t have that, right?
RE: Fact #35 (Finnish Bottleneck Concentrated Rare Diseases) – That’s true. On the flip side, some genetic diseases that are common elsewhere are rare in Finland because they didn’t go through that bottleneck. Cystic fibrosis is a good example; it’s common in Europe but extremely rare in Finland.
RE: Fact #20 (Postal Motto Echoes Herodotus’s Couriers) – It’s total nonsense. I’m a mail carrier, and I get told to stop working because of the ‘gloom of night’ or heavy snow several times a year. Management definitely doesn’t care about the heat or the rain, though.
RE: Fact #4 (Juanita Jordan Investigated Michael’s Infidelity) – I actually saw Michael Jordan in Saint Tropez with his new wife. The irony was that he was wearing a t-shirt featuring a massive photo of himself.
RE: Fact #31 (Langer Declared North Dakota Independent) – Say what you want, but it is hilarious that he was reelected just two years later. It is also depressing because it makes perfect sense.
Essentially, he was a corrupt demagogue whose supporters didn’t care about his scandals because he saved their farms. Even with his extreme methods, he got the job done. I looked into it briefly, and he basically built a massive cult of personality among desperate farmers during the Great Depression. He provided real financial relief and prevented hundreds of foreclosures. He even used the National Guard to block wheat exports until prices rose and stopped banks from foreclosing on farms. When he faced fraud charges, he fought them until they were dismissed, then spun the whole thing as a political hit job against a guy who fought for the ‘little guy.’ It worked, and he won re-election. Later, as a senator, he supported civil rights and even stood up against the internment of Japanese Americans, while also calling out the red scare for the nonsense it was.
RE: Fact #9 (Parton Congratulated Three 6 Mafia) – Calling Dolly Parton ‘gracious’ feels like an understatement. This doesn’t surprise me at all.
RE: Fact #16 (Shackleton’s Crew Used Cocaine-And-Caffeine Tablets) – They all made it out alive, though. A real testament to British spirit, led by an Irishman.
RE: Fact #20 (Postal Motto Echoes Herodotus’s Couriers) – Funny enough, Herodotus was talking about the Persian Empire’s courier system. The architects of that NYC post office just carved the line into the stone back in 1912, and everyone just assumed it was the official motto.
RE: Fact #6 (Cryptic Pregnancies Hide Until Childbirth) – That has to be one of the most terrifying, stressful situations imaginable. A surprise birth sounds like a total nightmare.
I know a couple who had this happen when they were only 18. She was 120 lbs and didn’t show at all, plus she kept having her regular periods. No morning sickness, nothing. One day she had back pain, tried a bath and ibuprofen, and it just got worse. Her partner drove her to the ER, and thirty minutes later, he got a call saying, ‘Brittany is fine, but you’re going to need a car seat.’ She gave birth to a healthy, full-term boy right there. They were incredibly shocked, but luckily the community pulled together to get them everything they needed. It was a massive adjustment, but the baby just turned 13, and they’re actually still together.
The show ‘I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant’ tried to raise awareness, but it’s so surreal that most people don’t believe it’s real until it happens to someone they know.
RE: Fact #30 (Ancient Courts Tortured Enslaved Witnesses) – Torture is a useless way to get the truth; it just makes the victim say whatever the torturer wants to hear.
RE: Fact #41 (Germany Uses One Alternative-Medicine License) – It is less of a test for real medical expertise and more of a check to ensure you aren’t an immediate threat to public health.
Alternative medicine sucks up a patient’s time, money, and effort, often during windows where early medical intervention is crucial. Is it inherently harmful just by acting as a distraction from real treatment?
RE: Fact #13 (Russell Crowe Recommended Hugh Jackman) – He actually suggested they hire a “huge, jacked man” for the role, and they just ran with it.
RE: Fact #7 (Chernobyl Became History’s Costliest Disaster) – The book ‘Midnight in Chernobyl’ really makes the case that the massive cost of cleaning up that disaster was a major factor in the Soviet Union’s collapse.
RE: Fact #12 (Iceland Leads Both Development Indexes) – The fact that Iceland only has about 300, 000 people really helps. It gets much tougher to keep inequality in check as a population grows. I’ve got to give credit to Germany for being the only country with a large population to crack the top 10.
RE: Fact #44 (Orenstein Invented Poker’s Hidden-Card Camera) – This invention did so much to make poker a mainstream spectacle. Trying to watch a poker game on TV without knowing at least one person’s hole cards is just painful.
RE: Fact #50 (Ryazan Slaughtered Its Own Success) – In 1957, Nikita Khrushchev wanted to ‘catch up and overtake America’ by tripling meat production in three years. When the Central Committee did not see the growth they wanted, they issued a decree demanding ‘decisive action.’ Alexei Larionov stepped up and promised he could hit the goal in one year, which he told Khrushchev in person in 1958. To make it happen, Larionov slaughtered all the 1959 calves, wiped out most of the breeding and dairy stock, snatched up private cattle from farmers, and bought meat from other areas. By late 1959, Ryazan hit its 150, 000-ton goal, triple the year prior. Larionov got the ‘Hero of Socialist Labour’ title and the region got the Order of Lenin. But in 1960, production fell off a cliff to 30, 000 tons because of the mass slaughter. Farmers stopped working because their cattle were gone, which halved grain production too. By that fall, he was fired, and on October 10, 1960, he killed himself. Khrushchev had other obsessions too, like forcing farmers to plant maize in regions where it would not grow, which all damaged his image and helped lead to his removal in 1964. Also, Mao Zedong was inspired by Khrushchev’s talk and started the ‘Great Leap Forward’ in 1958, ignoring Soviet warnings.
Then some Wall Street type read about this and thought, ‘What a great idea!’ And that, my friends, is how Private Equity was born.
RE: Fact #30 (Ancient Courts Tortured Enslaved Witnesses) – This is the kind of stuff they never include in the movies. It really makes you question people who romanticize history.
RE: Fact #12 (Iceland Leads Both Development Indexes) – They’ve also snagged 9 out of 48 World’s Strongest Man titles, which is wild for a population of only 395, 000.
RE: Fact #8 (Gerard Butler Improvised Sparta’s Scream) – There are whole generations out there who have no idea how much this line dominated the early internet.
RE: Fact #43 (Akbar Collected Thousands Of Cheetahs) – Tigers were heavily hunted too, but unlike them, the cheetah was completely wiped out in India. It was declared extinct there in 1952 and now they are putting massive resources into trying to bring them back.
RE: Fact #43 (Akbar Collected Thousands Of Cheetahs) – What is even more heartbreaking is that cheetahs almost never attack humans.
RE: Fact #32 (Tree-Of-Heaven Toxins May Protect Lanternflies) – Birds will eat them, but when the lanternflies feed on the Tree of Heaven, they absorb toxins that make them bitter and can actually get the birds sick. In their native range in China, they have natural predators like parasitic wasps, praying mantises, and spiders.
RE: Fact #11 (Iliad Fragment Accompanied Egyptian Mummy) – As a fellow book lover, I totally get the urge. Bury me with my favorite reads, too!
RE: Fact #38 (Stress Odor Alters Dogs’ Expectations) – Humans can smell stress too. The unique thing here is that dogs can pick it up across species.
RE: Fact #33 (Denmark’s Farmland Covers Sixty Percent) – Thinking 60% of Denmark is farmland is like me having a veggie patch in my Aussie backyard.
RE: Fact #10 (Sherwin-Williams Withheld Million-Dollar Home-Run Donation) – Ah the insurance. The good guys !
They were probably thinking, ‘Those sick kids didn’t really need the money anyway.’
RE: Fact #49 (Adenosine Briefly Pauses The Heart) – It is wild that adenosine does this at high concentrations, considering it is not really just a ‘drug.’ It is basically in every living thing. It is a building block of our DNA and RNA, and it makes up the ‘A’ in ATP, which you probably remember from biology class as the energy source for our cells. Because biology loves to reuse the same mechanisms, our brains also use it as a signaling chemical. It binds to specific receptors to help us feel sleepy, acting as one of the body’s ‘rest and digest’ signals.
RE: Fact #37 (Opry Welcomed Thirteen-Year-Old Dolly Parton) – I was lucky enough to see her perform at the Opry when I was younger. She was truly amazing.
RE: Fact #28 (Bullet’s Unlikely Path Killed Cooley) – My yoga studio in downtown Los Angeles shares a wall with an indoor shooting range. It is pretty distracting while you are trying to balance, and I am already terrible at yoga. I hope there are no more magic bullets like that.
RE: Fact #37 (Opry Welcomed Thirteen-Year-Old Dolly Parton) – It seems like everyone respected and liked her, no matter what kind of music they were into.
RE: Fact #24 (Revolutionaries Stole Richelieu’s Preserved Head) – In the later Musketeer novels, the main characters actually look back on Richelieu with some fondness, noting how much better he was than the person who replaced him.
RE: Fact #1 (Fair Play Gives Readers Clues) – This is a huge gripe I have with the game Heavy Rain. It’s a detective mystery that literally lies to the player to make it impossible to solve until the final reveal. I had my wife play through it, and near the end, she said, ‘I think I know who the killer is, but the game insists it can’t be them, so I must be wrong.’ She was right.
RE: Fact #29 (Gallaudet Protesters Ousted Incoming President) – During my ASL classes, it was often mentioned that the deaf community can be prideful to a fault. There is often a push against things like cochlear implants and a real sense of suspicion toward anyone who isn’t deaf, even if they are fluent in ASL.
RE: Fact #21 (Alan Bean Blinded Apollo’s Camera) – My understanding is that he didn’t point it at the sun directly, but at the reflection on the foil covering the lunar module’s descent stage. The researcher who covered this definitely did his homework.
RE: Fact #28 (Bullet’s Unlikely Path Killed Cooley) – I had heard about this story, but I never realized the victim was only 14. That is just heartbreaking.
Right, I remember that recreation in the show where the person sitting there just slumps over.
RE: Fact #15 (Junior Bridgeman Built Fast-Food Empire) – He was, and still is, really beloved in Louisville.
RE: Fact #19 (Marcus Schrenker Faked Death Midflight) – He radioed that his windshield imploded and he was bleeding out, yet they found the plane with an intact windshield and zero blood. Plus, he made that call right near an air base, so jets were on him immediately. Then he actually asked the police for help finding a place to stay. This guy was a total moron.
RE: Fact #40 (Bruises Can Permanently Stain Skin) – I slammed my leg in a car door and the mark is still there 8 years later. No idea how I managed to do that to myself.
RE: Fact #48 (Prion-Free Goats Remain Apparently Healthy) – It would be amazing if we could figure out how to safely shut down normal prion protein production in humans. We could stop the disease right in its tracks. As far as I know, knocking it out in lab animals is not usually a huge deal, though I suspect it is much harder to pull off in humans even with all our gene therapy progress.
RE: Fact #1 (Fair Play Gives Readers Clues) – That’s definitely better than those early detective stories where it suddenly turns out the murderer was an orangutan. We need more stories ending with an orangutan-ex-machina.
RE: Fact #13 (Russell Crowe Recommended Hugh Jackman) – Can you imagine Crowe having to stay in that kind of shape for 30 years? He would have hated it. Honestly, it sounds like both guys ended up exactly where they wanted to be.
RE: Fact #6 (Cryptic Pregnancies Hide Until Childbirth) – A friend of mine went through this! Her first pregnancy was typical, but the second one showed absolutely no symptoms until the baby arrived. Both of her daughters are healthy.
RE: Fact #41 (Germany Uses One Alternative-Medicine License) – Germany is totally obsessed with this stuff and it is a goldmine for grifters. Homeopathy is sold in regular pharmacies, which legitimizes it, and some insurance even covers it. I have a GP near my house who is a trained medic but also offers homeopathy. I cannot grasp how someone with a scientific background thinks sugar pills can cure anything. Note that this is different from natural herbal remedies like teas or ointments, which can actually help with symptoms, but homeopathy is pure placebo.
RE: Fact #42 (Nigeria’s Life Expectancy Ranks Lowest) – That is the lowest reported life expectancy. I can only imagine places like Mauritania aren’t doing much better.
RE: Fact #10 (Sherwin-Williams Withheld Million-Dollar Home-Run Donation) – On the other hand, the Cincinnati Reds have a promotion where a fan wins a truck if a player hits a specific sign. It’s never actually been hit, but once Jesse Winker came within three inches, and the team and the dealership just said ‘close enough’ and gave him the truck anyway.
RE: Fact #42 (Nigeria’s Life Expectancy Ranks Lowest) – Lowest life expectancy among the countries that actually have the ability to record it.
RE: Fact #38 (Stress Odor Alters Dogs’ Expectations) – I think this has been known for a while. I remember hearing that dogs sometimes try to comfort stressed people to get them to stop ‘stinking’ of stress. I’ve noticed dogs doing that to me before, too.
I love the idea that we think dogs are being sweet by comforting us, when really they’re just disgusted by the smell of our stress and don’t know any other way to make it stop.
RE: Fact #27 (Se7en’s Ending Survived Studio Interference) – That bleak ending is exactly what made it such an effective, memorable psychological horror. If they had gone with a conventional ending, it would have just been another forgettable cop movie in that star-studded catalog.