1 Antenna Hiss Revealed Big-Bang Radiation
Bell Labs physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson spent a year trying to eliminate a persistent hiss from their antenna in Holmdel, New Jersey. They ruled out interference, evicted nesting pigeons, and scrubbed their droppings from the equipment, but the noise remained. Princeton physicist Robert Dicke helped confirm that the signal was cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang. The discovery earned Penzias and Wilson the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.
2. South Korea has seen a rising trend of “dopamine sites,” fake shopping and food delivery platforms designed to provide the satisfaction of spending without an actual purchase. Users can browse products, customize food orders, fill virtual carts, and track imaginary couriers, but they pay nothing and receive nothing. Some platforms complete the experience by showing how much money or how many calories the user supposedly saved.
3. Victorinox lost over 40% of its business after the 9/11 attacks led airlines to prohibit sharp objects aboard aircraft. Swiss Army knives had been staples in airport duty-free shops and on flights, but airports suddenly returned vast quantities of unsold knives. Victorinox avoided layoffs by lending employees to nearby businesses and expanding its focus on household knives, watches, and luggage.
4. A 2021 study of 1,763 Hungarian adults found that higher levels of celebrity worship were associated with lower cognitive performance. Participants completed a celebrity-attitude survey along with vocabulary and digit-symbol tests measuring different cognitive abilities.
5. During the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969, Buzz Aldrin reported seeing flashes of light even when his eyes were closed. NASA later linked the effect to cosmic rays, high-energy charged particles that passed through his eyes and stimulated his retinas. His brain perceived flashes even though no external light had entered his eyes.
6 Bottle Scam Generated 177,451 Refunds
A 37-year-old drinks vendor in Cologne, Germany, collected EUR 44,362.75, about $47,000, by feeding the same bottle into a recycling machine 177,451 times. He spent around EUR 5,000 installing a magnetic sensor and wooden tunnel that allowed him to retrieve the bottle before the machine shredded it. He kept a radio beside the machine because repeating the process all day became extremely boring. An anonymous tip exposed the fraud, and a Cologne court sentenced him to 10 months in prison.
7. Modern beekeeping rests on a narrow measurement identified in 1851 by Philadelphia clergyman Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth. He found that bees left gaps measuring roughly 6.4 to 9.5 millimeters free of both honeycomb and propolis, the resinous material they use to seal smaller spaces. Langstroth used this “bee space” in his patented movable-frame hive, allowing beekeepers to lift out frames for inspection or harvesting without cutting apart the comb.
8. The Mr. Bean movie opened opposite the R-rated Starship Troopers in 1997 and unexpectedly became the US box-office champion that weekend. Visual effects supervisor Phil Tippett recalled producer Jon Davison reporting that Starship Troopers had “tanked” with an opening of only $15 million. The filmmakers suspected that underage viewers had bought tickets for Mr. Bean and then sneaked into Starship Troopers because they could not purchase tickets for the R-rated film directly.
9. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige almost quit Marvel during production of Captain America: Civil War after Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter ordered writers to remove Robert Downey Jr. from the script. Downey’s expanded role required a large salary, profit percentages, and a potential performance bonus, while Perlmutter wanted further budget cuts. Feige threatened to resign rather than lose Downey from the film. Disney CEO Bob Iger later restructured Marvel Studios so Feige no longer answered to Perlmutter or the Marvel Creative Committee.
10. Japan’s Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest hotel, is no longer family-owned after more than 1,300 years under the same lineage. Founded in 705 by Fujiwara no Mahito, the hot spring inn passed through 52 generations of the family, including adopted heirs. In 2017, no relative wanted to inherit the business, so general manager Kenjiro Kawano became its president. Because Kawano could not inherit the family’s holding company, ownership moved to the newly formed Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan Limited.
11 Veronika Became First Tool-Using Cow
In 2016, a pet cow named Veronika in Austria learned to grip fallen tree branches in her mouth and use them to scratch parts of her body she could not reach. Researchers later tested her with a deck brush and watched her use the bristles on thick upper-body skin and the smooth handle on delicate lower areas. A 2026 study described her behavior as the first scientifically documented example of tool use in cattle. Scientists do not consider Veronika unusually intelligent and suspect that humans have overlooked similar abilities in cows for thousands of years.
12. Frisson is the brief tingling and goosebumps that music can produce in about half of all people. The response is not uniquely musical and can also arise during intense moments of understanding, such as a scientific breakthrough, or during a powerful religious ceremony. The brain’s reward system contributes the pleasurable feeling, while the sympathetic nervous system produces the tingling, chills, and goosebumps.
13. More than 400 years ago, in 1620, Dutch engineer and inventor Cornelis Drebbel built the first navigable submarine while working for the English Royal Navy. He constructed the steerable vessel from a leather-covered wooden frame, while his final model used six oars and could carry 16 passengers. The submarine reportedly remained submerged for three hours while traveling beneath the River Thames. Drebbel also took King James I on a test dive, making him the first monarch to travel underwater.
14. Columbus, Ohio, has served for decades as one of America’s leading test markets, especially for fast food. Companies favor Central Ohio because it places urban, suburban, and rural communities close together while offering relative affordability, a strong economy, several industries, and a diverse population. Local companies Wendy’s and White Castle helped establish the practice, while Burger King, Taco Bell, Chipotle, and other chains later tested new products and concepts there. Restaurant executives say a product that performs well in Columbus will often appeal across much of the United States.
15. NASA lost contact with its Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration satellite, known as IMAGE, in December 2005 and heard nothing from it for more than 12 years. In January 2018, Canadian amateur astronomer Scott Tilley detected a signal that he believed came from the missing spacecraft. NASA used its Deep Space Network to investigate, while the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory confirmed the satellite’s identity through its identification code, 166. IMAGE transmitted basic data suggesting that its main control system still worked, but its weakening signal disappeared again in February 2018.
16 Japan’s Liberty-Sized Shafts Prevent Flooding
Japan’s Metropolitan Outer Area Underground Discharge Channel contains flood-control shafts large enough to hold the Statue of Liberty. Completed in 2006 after 13 years of construction, the system redirects overflowing rivers through underground tunnels into a vast pressure-adjusting tank known as the “underground shrine.” Its turbines can pump 200 cubic meters of water per second into the Edogawa River. Although authorities use it an average of only seven times a year, the government estimates that it reduced flood damage by approximately 148.4 billion yen during its first 18 years.
17. Iraq’s Mosul Dam holds back 11.1 cubic kilometers of water, and a 2016 US Embassy warning estimated that a collapse could kill up to 1.5 million people in the resulting flash floods. Engineers built the dam on gypsum bedrock, a soft mineral that dissolves as water circulates through it and creates new gaps beneath the foundation. To keep the structure stable, 24 machines continuously inject a liquid mixture of cement and additives into those openings. Workers have pumped more than 50,000 tonnes of material beneath the dam since its reservoir filled in 1986, but constant maintenance remains necessary because the rock continues to dissolve.
18. Most of the cast of The Good Place and many of its rotating directors filmed the first season without knowing its twist ending. Series creator Michael Schur told only Kristen Bell and Ted Danson among the cast from the beginning, while the writers knew so they could plant clues throughout the season. Schur waited until near the end of filming to reveal that the supposed Good Place was actually the Bad Place. He said the secrecy helped the actors deliver honest performances because they believed the same lie as their characters.
19. A woman named Sarah Rosetta Wakeman disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the Union Army as Lyons Wakeman during the American Civil War. She joined the 153rd New York Volunteer Infantry in 1862, fought at Pleasant Hill during the Red River Campaign, and later contracted chronic diarrhea. Wakeman died at a military hospital in New Orleans on June 19, 1864, without anyone discovering her identity, and the Army buried her with full military honors under her alias. Her story remained hidden until 1976, when relatives found her wartime letters in an attic.
20. The familiar smell of old books comes from paper decomposing and releasing hundreds of volatile organic compounds. These include vanillin, which smells like vanilla; benzaldehyde, which smells like almonds; and furfural, which produces notes associated with toasted bread and caramel. Each book creates a different chemical blend based on its paper, ink, binding, storage conditions, and treatment history.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Meredith Victory Carried 14,000 Refugees
In December 1950, the cargo ship SS Meredith Victory, built for 35 crew members and 12 passengers, took aboard more than 14,000 Korean refugees during the evacuation of Hungnam during the Korean War. The refugees packed themselves chest-to-chest across the deck and cargo holds, with some resting atop jet-fuel drums. The unescorted ship crossed an enemy minefield without a doctor and with little food or water. Nobody died during the voyage, and five babies were born before the refugees disembarked at Koje-Do on Christmas Day.
22. The household of U.S. President George Washington offered a $10 reward after an enslaved woman named Oney Judge escaped from the President’s House in Philadelphia in 1796. Judge fled because Martha Washington planned to give her to her granddaughter as a wedding present, which would return Judge to Virginia with little chance of freedom. After Judge reached Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Washington asked U.S. Treasury Secretary Oliver Wolcott Jr. to arrange her capture and return. Customs collector Joseph Whipple refused to force Judge onto a ship and warned that an abduction could trigger a riot, so the plan failed and Judge remained free.
23. Since February 29, 2020, Luxembourg has offered free public transport across the entire country to residents, commuters, and visitors alike. Passengers can ride buses, trams, and second-class trains without buying a ticket, including through rural areas. Only first-class train travel requires payment, and passengers must carry identification in case a conductor requests it.
24. American basketball star Michael Jordan donated his entire $1 million salary from his first season with the Washington Wizards after returning from retirement in 2001. He pledged the money to relief efforts supporting victims of the September 11 attacks in Washington and New York. Jordan gave $100,000 to a fund for children who lost a parent or guardian in the Pentagon attack and directed the remainder to other relief organizations.
25. In 1903, Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I made the final use of a European monarch’s veto in a papal election, targeting Italian Cardinal Mariano Rampolla. A Polish cardinal named Jan Puzyna announced the veto during the conclave on the emperor’s behalf, even though reports claimed Rampolla had enough votes to win. Rampolla initially gained more votes, but his support eventually collapsed, and the cardinals elected Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto, who became Pope Pius X. On January 20, 1904, Pius X abolished the veto as one of his first official acts, formally ending the practice.
RE: Fact #21 (Meredith Victory Carried 14, 000 Refugees) – Five babies being born during that crossing seems like a lot, even with 14, 000 people. I wonder if there was some selection bias where pregnant women were prioritized for getting on the ship.
The “women and children first” mentality might explain it; statistically, it’s likely a higher number of pregnant women were given spots.
RE: Fact #4 (Celebrity Worshippers Showed Lower Cognition) – There’s definitely a connection there, but I’d be interested to know why. Do people lose focus on other things because they’re pouring their energy into celebrity culture, or are people who are already struggling cognitively more likely to obsess over celebrities?
It’s basically an abstracted version of social engagement. Talking about what people we know are doing is a core human trait, we’re a tribal species, and we’re wired for complex social groups. Gossip is just a shortcut to trigger those same social reward centers without the interaction being ‘real, ‘ similar to how gaming rewards our brains. It makes sense that people who get heavily invested in celebrity lives might be falling into a dopamine loop. Just like someone playing games or slots obsessively, the people who get truly obsessed with gossip might see their mental performance drop as a result of that long-term feedback loop.
As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
RE: Fact #31 (Gotham Began As Irving’s Insult) – Sounds like they were a village that acted like fools just so the king would skip over them during his royal tours.
RE: Fact #26 (Fat Controller Became Topham Hatt) – I honestly thought that was just his name and ‘The Fat Controller’ was the nickname.
Yeah, it is his real name in both, but the British version leans into the ‘Fat Controller’ nickname.
RE: Fact #28 (Harald Became Norway’s Native-Born King) – Apparently, one of his earliest memories was attending FDR’s fourth inauguration.
RE: Fact #46 (The Mousetrap Run Prevents Filming) – At the close of every show, the cast comes out to tell the audience how long it has been running. They explain that it’s lasted this long because nobody has spoiled the twist, and then they make everyone swear not to reveal the ending.
The movie ‘See How They Run’ features that exact moment.
RE: Fact #1 (Antenna Hiss Revealed Big-Bang Radiation) – I can see them standing there and thinking, “We’re going to need a much better way to clean this.”
RE: Fact #24 (Jordan Donated Entire Comeback Salary) – He also gave up his ownership interest in the Wizards just to return to the court, and then he donated that salary on top of it.
The owners promised they would give him his position back after he played, but they didn’t follow through.
RE: Fact #15 (IMAGE Reappeared After Twelve Years) – It really is a shame they lost contact again just a month later. They still aren’t entirely sure what went wrong. It wasn’t reporting any issues before it went silent initially, and there is no sign of damage or debris. When they reached it in 2018, the onboard computers were running and sending the right data. It acknowledged a few commands, then just went dark and hasn’t been heard from since. It must have been incredibly frustrating for the NASA team to get their hopes up and track down old equipment just to talk to it, only for it to vanish again after a few messages.
Maybe it just caught a glimpse of what was happening on Earth and decided to go back to sleep.
RE: Fact #6 (Bottle Scam Generated 177, 451 Refunds) – I’m not scared of the guy who recycled 177, 451 bottles. I’m scared of the guy who recycled the same one 177, 451 times.
RE: Fact #41 (Little Bighorn Cost 42, 000 Rounds) – Even ignoring the lost ammunition that drives the shots-per-hit number up, the Civil War required 200 to 500 rounds to hit one target, and those were slow-loading muskets. Custer had cased cartridges and could fire much faster, which leads to more ammo spent with fewer hits. The number of rounds per casualty has just gone up over time. In WW1 it was 10, 000 rounds, in WW2 it was 25, 000 to 45, 000, in Vietnam it hit 50, 000 to 200, 000, and in Iraq it was over 200, 000. So, 840 rounds per casualty actually seems right in line with the trend of technological improvement.
Well, in the Civil War, you had columns of soldiers standing in front of each other and firing volleys. Now we use automatic weapons for suppressing fire, which is meant to keep enemies pinned down behind cover rather than hitting them directly. There are also defensive tactics in play now that make hitting targets much harder.
RE: Fact #44 (George Wallace Renounced Segregationist Politics) – It seems like he never actually bought into those beliefs. It was just a cold political calculation to win over white blue-collar voters in Alabama, especially since he had more liberal views on racial equality earlier in his career.
RE: Fact #6 (Bottle Scam Generated 177, 451 Refunds) – I heard about a case where two cleaners kept feeding the same bottles into a recycling machine, taking them back out of the bin, and running them through again until they had 100 euros worth of deposit slips. They spent the whole night doing it, but when they tried to use the slips, the cashier got suspicious because nobody honestly accumulates that much on a single receipt. Of course, they did the whole thing right in front of security cameras, so they were charged with fraud and fired.
RE: Fact #27 (Sears Sold Mail-Order Machine Guns) – That 1917 military equipment catalog from Sears was wild. You could buy everything from Colt machine guns and pistols to uniforms and camping gear. They offered parcel-post delivery anywhere in the US, or even to soldiers in Europe. It wasn’t just for troops, either, anyone could buy from it. And the best part? It came with the standard Sears guarantee: if you weren’t perfectly satisfied, you could send it back for a full refund.
Since those were Colt machine guns, it had to be the ‘potato digger’ model, which was mostly for training. It’s unlikely many people actually bought one, it was probably just a way for them to dump surplus stock after they stopped production in 1916.
RE: Fact #7 (Bee Space Unlocked Modern Beekeeping) – Beekeeper here: bees treat “bee space” as more of a suggestion than a law. Sometimes we end up with “crazy comb” where they build across the frames instead of on the foundation. It rarely gets so bad you can’t get the frames out, but sometimes they get stuck together. If you catch it early, it’s best to just scrape the extra wax off and put it back; the bees will usually chew it up and rebuild it the right way. The real weirdness is the propolis. It’s essentially regurgitated tree sap, and they use it to glue down anything they can’t carry out, twigs, dead bugs, or even your hive tool if you leave it inside. I’ve had hives where I couldn’t move the entrance reducer bar at all because they’d sealed it shut with rock-hard resin.
They’ll cover anything they can’t chew through in propolis. I’ve seen them seal over dead lizards, mice, and snakes. Once, after a herd of cows knocked over a few of my hives, I saw them propolis over 5-inch gaps.
RE: Fact #9 (Feige Nearly Resigned Over Downey) – Marvel had a huge issue with their “Creative Committee” in New York. They were totally disconnected from the filmmaking process but would constantly meddle. There are plenty of stories about this, but the most obvious one is that they wanted to strip the music and those perfect needle-drop moments out of Guardians of the Galaxy.
People like Perlmutter, who is a well-documented bigot, usually don’t have a clue how art actually works.
RE: Fact #34 (Drug Candidates Face Ninety-Percent Failure) – That is why it’s so common to start a drug discovery campaign by screening millions of compounds. If you’re lucky enough to find a few thousand potential binders, almost all of them will still fail at some point.
RE: Fact #18 (The Good Place Concealed Twist) – The first season was fun and had a vaguely Shyamalan-esque vibe, but season two is what really makes the show special. It asks real questions: can people actually change? What do we owe each other? Do we have free will? It’s a goofy sitcom with something meaningful to say.
RE: Fact #45 (Who, Me? Stench Weapon Backfired) – This reminds me of the CIA’s weird plots to ruin Castro, like the plan to make his hair fall out so he’d lose his standing. They really had some bizarre, failed ideas to take him out.
RE: Fact #43 (Eleonora’s Falcons Keep Prey Alive) – It is funny to me that people think this is so dark. Humans have been doing this for centuries; we just have different methods for keeping our food captive. We also have a long history of keeping our own species captive, often with the intent to harm or kill them, not just eat them.
RE: Fact #16 (Japan’s Liberty-Sized Shafts Prevent Flooding) – Sure, but how much does it cost to ship the Statue of Liberty to Japan seven times a year?
RE: Fact #47 (Armand Joined France’s Revolutionary Army) – “This little unfortunate was nearly twenty in 1792; the fury of the people and the fear of being thought a favourite of the Queen’s had made him the most sanguinary terrorist of Versailles. He was killed at the battle of Jemappes”. It sounds like he might have done it to save his own neck, similar to how Philip Equality tried to survive by voting for his own cousin’s execution and changing his name.
RE: Fact #18 (The Good Place Concealed Twist) – There is a funny clip on YouTube of Tahani, Jason, and Janet finding out about the season finale twist.
RE: Fact #31 (Gotham Began As Irving’s Insult) – Gotham is still around, just south of Nottingham. And it’s pronounced like “goat-em.”
Even the local buses out that way have a little bat symbol on the destination signs.
RE: Fact #8 (Bean Victory Raised Ticket-Sneaking Suspicions) – I don’t remember what we actually went to see, but I definitely told my parents and my friends’ parents that we were headed to see Pacific Rim Uprising. We came home and raved about it, saying it was even better than the first one. About a week later, my dad went to see the movie himself and caught us in the lie immediately.
RE: Fact #10 (Nishiyama Onsen Ended Fifty-Two-Generation Ownership) – The idea of “continuous operation by the same lineage” is pretty misleading. Like many Japanese businesses, this inn kept it in the family by formally adopting adult employees whenever there wasn’t a biological heir. I’m not saying adopted people aren’t family, but adopting a man in his 20s or 30s isn’t the same thing as raising a child, and it’s certainly not continuing the same bloodline.
RE: Fact #38 (Jackson Games Defeated Secret Service) – People often leave out who actually wrote that. It was Loyd Blankenship, known online as The Mentor, who wrote the Hacker Manifesto back in 1986. The Secret Service saw a hacker writing about hacking and one agent even called GURPS Cyberpunk a handbook for computer crime. The company nearly went under and had to lay off half their staff, but they ended up printing The book that was seized by the U.S. Secret Service on the cover, which became their best marketing tool.
Reminds me of the marketing for Report From Iron Mountain: On The Possibility And Desirability Of Peace.
RE: Fact #7 (Bee Space Unlocked Modern Beekeeping) – The idea of destroying an entire hive just to get honey sounds terrible, so this guy really saved the craft.
That was the standard way for thousands of years. The classic hive shape you see in old art is called a skep, made from wound grass. It was basically a bottom-entry jar. When harvest time came, keepers would smash the whole thing, bees, comb, and all, which killed the colony. They had to catch new swarms every year. Those are considered pretty inhumane now and are illegal in a lot of places.
Man, and Utah’s flag is actually really nice. Now I won’t be able to look at it without picturing dead bee colonies.
RE: Fact #20 (Paper Decomposition Creates Old-Book Smell) – For those interested in the chemistry, vanillin, benzaldehyde, and furfural aren’t just byproducts of paper, they are commonly used in perfumery as well.
RE: Fact #46 (The Mousetrap Run Prevents Filming) – I’m a huge Agatha Christie fan, so I have to weigh in. You know that classic joke, ‘the butler did it’? It’s actually from the 1800s, way before Christie started writing. She never actually used a butler as the murderer. Maybe a killer would pose as one, or the butler was guilty of something else, but she never made the butler the culprit. It was considered cheating. In the Golden Age of mysteries, it was a game of wits between the writer and the reader. The butler is a ‘cheat’ character because they have keys to every room, access to everything, and a valid excuse to be anywhere at any time. Of course, the butler did it, that’s why it was a cliché. 🫡
The movie ‘Clue’ supposedly filmed a fourth ending where Tim Curry’s character, the butler, is the killer.
Exactly! That’s my favorite ending, but even then, in true Christie fashion, he’s not the actual murderer, he was Mr. Boddy all along, and the guy who turned up dead was his butler. I love that movie. That line about having ‘flames on the side of my face’ was an ad-lib, and it was just too good to cut.
RE: Fact #50 (Telly Savalas Called Sheraton-Universal Home) – Having your 72nd birthday party at your own local hangout, surrounded by friends, and then passing away the very next day… as far as celebrity exits go, that’s about as poetic as it gets.
RE: Fact #22 (Oney Judge Escaped Presidential Enslavement) – When Pennsylvania introduced laws to gradually free enslaved people at a certain age, Washington started rotating his enslaved staff out of the state before they hit that age just to keep them enslaved.
Interestingly, an English judge once ruled that simply breathing English air made a person free, which really jump-started the abolitionist movement. It raises the question of how slavery could be considered illegal in England but still practiced in places like Jamaica.
RE: Fact #36 (Jimmy Carter Federally Legalized Homebrewing) – Most alcohol regulations are just nonsense meant to protect distributors. My favorite example is when a tasting room attached to a distillery has to buy their own products back from a distributor just to offer tastings.
RE: Fact #6 (Bottle Scam Generated 177, 451 Refunds) – I knew someone who drank an 18-pack of Coors Banquet every day. He used to drop a piece of pea gravel into every can before crushing it just to get a bit more cash at the recycling center.
that trick doesn’t really work. I worked at a salvage yard for years, and we weren’t born yesterday. We processed so many cans every day that we knew exactly how much a bag of crushed or uncrushed cans should weigh. We knew what to listen for when we shook the bags, and we knew people liked to bring them in after a rainstorm to add weight. We never just weighed the bags; we dumped them into large pre-weighed wire baskets so we could drain the water. We could tell by the feel of the bag if there was junk like sand, rocks, or dirt inside. We would dock them for that. If a 10lb wire basket filled with 10 bags of cans weighed 60lbs and clearly contained pebbles, we’d dock 20lbs for the debris and 10lbs for the basket, paying for only 30lbs. Take it or leave it. If they didn’t like it, they could dig through the baskets to repack their cans, we didn’t care, especially since they were trying to pull a fast one. Plus, we bought those cans at a loss anyway. We only buy them to get people in the door so they’ll look at the prices for the stuff that actually makes us money, like copper, brass, electric motors, and steel. I don’t mean to sound snarky, but people who pull these scams are just thieves, plain and simple.
RE: Fact #26 (Fat Controller Became Topham Hatt) – So, what did they call the thin controller? He didn’t pop up as often, but he was definitely there.
You actually had the answer: The Thin Controller, who ran the narrow-gauge engines in the books, was based on Mr. Edward Thomas, the manager of the Talyllyn Railway.
RE: Fact #37 (Ugly-Law Arrest Collapsed Over Definition) – Haha, I would be absolutely cooked under a law like that since I am old, blind, and toothless.
RE: Fact #15 (IMAGE Reappeared After Twelve Years) – I love the idea of releasing data for crowdsourcing. Whether it is ocean mapping or space exploration, there is so much data being gathered that we should make it more accessible. There is no telling what else might be found.
Plenty of NASA programs already put their raw data out there. Amateur scientists have actually made some cool discoveries by digging through it.
RE: Fact #5 (Buzz Aldrin Saw Cosmic-Ray Flashes) – I actually did a tour of the Kennedy Space Center once and had an astronaut as a guide. When it was time for questions, I asked how hard it was to sleep in space, and he brought this up.
RE: Fact #10 (Nishiyama Onsen Ended Fifty-Two-Generation Ownership) – In a way, this is probably a relief for the family. Nobody should feel forced to run a hotel just because they happened to be born into it.
RE: Fact #33 (Henryk Siwiak: 9/11’s Sole Homicide) – He’s like the ghost of September 11. He isn’t one of the 2, 977, he isn’t on any memorial, and he wasn’t mentioned in ceremonies, yet he wasn’t spared by that day either. The attacks killed his job site, forced him across the city, pulled away the detectives who should have worked his case, and left everyone around him too scared to even open a door. He died from a gunshot, but that day basically handed him to his killer. He deserves better than just being a piece of trivia. Henryk Siwiak was born in Kraków in 1955. He was an inspector for the Polish State Railways until he was laid off. At 46, he was married to Ewa, a high school biology teacher, and had two kids, Gabriela and Adam. He came to New York to visit his sister, Lucyna, in Far Rockaway. Even without a work permit, he stayed to take whatever jobs he could, sending money back to help his family. His plan was simple: save enough to go back to Poland and build a house for them. He never really mastered English. His sister warned him it was dangerous, but he didn’t listen because he liked it there. On the morning of September 11, he was working a construction job in Lower Manhattan and watched a plane hit the towers. After the site shut down, he walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to catch a train back to Queens. Needing to provide for his family, he searched for work that same afternoon. He found a cleaning job at a Pathmark in Brooklyn. To fill out the paperwork, he went to an employment agency in Bay Ridge. The agency owner was devastated, waiting to hear if her husband had survived the attacks. She didn’t know yet that he was already dead. Henryk, a stranger who barely spoke the language, stayed with her and tried to offer some comfort, telling her things would be okay, even though his own life had just been upended. He got the job. He went home and told his wife he was alive, but he went out that night anyway because he needed the money. His landlady gave him directions, but he ended up three miles away from the store. He was wearing camouflage gear, which might have made people suspicious on that specific night. He walked toward the wrong area of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Neighbors heard an argument, followed by shots. He was hit in the lung. He managed to crawl to a stoop and ring a doorbell, but the woman inside was terrified and didn’t open it. Understandably, nobody was opening doors that night. He died in the street. Because of the chaos, the police didn’t have the resources to process the scene properly, and the investigation stalled from the start. Some think he was mistaken for a terrorist, others think it was a botched robbery. His case remains unsolved. He was a good man who just wanted to build a home for his wife and kids. Rest in peace, Henryk Siwiak.
I wrote a long piece on here about an unrelated but maybe equally famous 9/11 case. During my research, I concluded that the average Manhattanite was actually more likely to be killed on 9/11 than they were to be murdered in 2001.
RE: Fact #13 (Cornelis Drebbel Took King Underwater) – The final model carrying 16 people with 6 oars is much larger than I would have expected.
How on earth did they seal the ports for the oars? That seems impossible.
RE: Fact #47 (Armand Joined France’s Revolutionary Army) – Marie Antoinette actually took in four children. One of them, Jean Amilcar, was a young boy from Senegal given to her as a gift when he was six. She freed and adopted him, but unlike the others, he wasn’t kept at court; he was sent straight to boarding school. When she was imprisoned and couldn’t pay his tuition, he was kicked out. Luckily, a former teacher took him in and got the revolutionary government to cover his schooling since they supported those who had been enslaved by the old regime. He was a talented artist and got into the Liancourt Academy at 15, but he died of an illness later that same year.
RE: Fact #42 (Methuselah Is Oldest Aquarium Fish) – There was another fish of the same species at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago that lived to be 107 before it died in 2017. A museum docent showed it to me when I took my kids there years ago.
RE: Fact #29 (Doctors Once Withheld Cancer Diagnoses) – ‘So, Doc, regarding those blood results from last week…’ ‘DEFINITELY NOT CANCER, I CAN TELL YOU THAT MUCH.’
RE: Fact #39 (Queen Elizabeth’s Letter Opens 2085) – That is the most sensationalized clickbait way to describe the fact that Queen Elizabeth II left a letter in a 100-year time capsule.
It would be cool if it were some earth-shattering reveal, but it will probably just be a nice note about her memories of the city and the country. You are exactly right.
RE: Fact #19 (Sarah Wakeman Fought As Lyons) – Wartime medical tents must have been incredibly chaotic. It seems almost certain that someone noticed her secret during her treatment or when they buried her. Maybe leaving her buried under her pseudonym was just a lack of care, but I prefer to think it was a deliberate act of kindness by someone who respected both the woman and the soldier.
RE: Fact #32 (Australia Released Myxoma Against Rabbits) – So the 0.2% who made it through were basically invincible super-rabbits. They probably started a ruling dynasty that held power for 20 years.
RE: Fact #28 (Harald Became Norway’s Native-Born King) – Norway was actually under Swedish kings until 1905, when they gained independence and chose a Danish prince as their own monarch. That king was Harald’s grandfather. Harald’s father was born in 1903, right before the family took the throne, so Harald (born in 1937) was the first king born into that new line of succession.
RE: Fact #14 (Columbus Became America’s Fast-Food Laboratory) – London, Ontario, serves the same purpose for Canada. Tim Hortons loves to test new menu items there before taking them nationwide.
RE: Fact #43 (Eleonora’s Falcons Keep Prey Alive) – They time their breeding for when the young of the year, small birds from northern Europe, are migrating across the Mediterranean for the first time, providing plenty of easy food. Their range is basically limited to the Mediterranean, and they hunt over the sea where there is nowhere to hide. Storing live birds is likely a response to big migration days; it ensures they have food left for their chicks on days when winds aren’t right and no migrants are crossing. Remember the name: Eleonora’s Falcon.
RE: Fact #35 (Highsmith’s Lovers Defied Her Antisemitism) – Learning about her is a real rollercoaster. First I thought of her as a great suspense writer, then I learned she was a trailblazer in lesbian fiction, and then I found out she was hateful and a pretty awful person to have in your life. She also stalked women, was obsessed with snails, and made a lot of her own furniture.
RE: Fact #32 (Australia Released Myxoma Against Rabbits) – I used to see rabbits suffering from myxomatosis whenever I visited my cousins in Devon. It was a horrible thing to witness and such a cruel way to handle a cull.
RE: Fact #37 (Ugly-Law Arrest Collapsed Over Definition) – It is wild to think about sending people to fight in a war, only to make it illegal for them to be in public if they came home with combat injuries.
Exactly. That is actually part of why the book First Blood was written; the author wanted to call out how poorly veterans were being treated in America.
RE: Fact #30 (Nakajima Lost Weight Inside Godzilla) – I’ve always wanted to be Godzilla. Losing weight by wearing a heavy costume sounds like just another way to get in on the fun.
RE: Fact #38 (Jackson Games Defeated Secret Service) – Interesting fact: Fallout was originally meant to be a GURPS game, but Steve Jackson had some issues with it, including one about Vault Boy, I think.
RE: Fact #19 (Sarah Wakeman Fought As Lyons) – “She contracted chronic diarrhea of which she eventually died on June 19, 1864.” It is easy to forget that we aren’t that far removed from a time when illness wiped out a huge portion of military forces.
RE: Fact #20 (Paper Decomposition Creates Old-Book Smell) – You named three common ones, but there are so many more involved in that process. Some of them are pretty nasty, and a few are even potentially carcinogenic.
RE: Fact #5 (Buzz Aldrin Saw Cosmic-Ray Flashes) – I’ve had radiation therapy for my brain, and when the beam crossed my eye, I saw these strange, fluorescent ultraviolet flashes. It was surreal. Also, 1/10 would not recommend being bolted to a table while they shoot radiation at your brain.
RE: Fact #2 (Dopamine Shopping Sites Deliver Nothing) – This feels a lot like those simulator games where you do a job just to get the virtual reward.
RE: Fact #47 (Armand Joined France’s Revolutionary Army) – The term ‘adopted’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. It was really more like fosterage; he didn’t receive any noble title or the Bourbon name. She could bring a five-year-old into court and support his family without making him royalty in any legal sense, which makes the whole situation even weirder.
RE: Fact #25 (Emperor Franz Joseph Vetoed Rampolla) – Incredible move by Pius to pull the ladder up like that.
RE: Fact #5 (Buzz Aldrin Saw Cosmic-Ray Flashes) – I’m not sure I could ever stop being creeped out by the idea of radiation particles literally passing through my eyes.
Trillions of neutrinos pass through your body every second, too. They aren’t even massless like light, they’re just incredibly tiny.
RE: Fact #18 (The Good Place Concealed Twist) – “Holy mother forking shirtballs.” That is easily one of the best twist endings I have ever seen.
Someone told me to watch it without knowing anything, but I didn’t take that as a sign that there was a major twist. My jaw hit the floor. It was handled so perfectly and didn’t feel forced at all.
RE: Fact #32 (Australia Released Myxoma Against Rabbits) – The Australian ecosystem is a total mess. Invasive species are doing their best to destroy entire food chains, while the local wildlife is stuck trying to kill off the main problem.
RE: Fact #12 (Frisson Extends Beyond Musical Goosebumps) – I saw Nathaniel Rateliff perform with the Colorado Symphony and had goosebumps almost the entire time. It was an experience unlike anything else I have ever had.
Nathaniel Rateliff is on my bucket list! Seeing him with a symphony sounds incredible.
RE: Fact #40 (ASML’s $150-Million Machine Blasts Tin) – I am lucky enough to be on the team that builds these. They are the most advanced machines humans have ever designed. You should also check out the work Zeiss does with the optics. It is wild.
RE: Fact #48 (Ireland Rejected Britain’s Unity Proposal) – This doesn’t really capture the political climate of the time or why there was so much hesitation to accept the deal, and it definitely exaggerates the scale of the offer. It felt a lot like the pre-WWI Home Rule offers that were constantly promised and then taken back. Having British troops in Ireland while the government was still cozying up to the Ulster Volunteers was a non-starter.
Also, Ireland didn’t really have much of an army to speak of back then, or for quite a while after independence.
RE: Fact #14 (Columbus Became America’s Fast-Food Laboratory) – That explains why we have so many competing fast-food and gas station chains that usually stay out of each other’s territory. I love my incredibly average city, it is a fantastic place to live, but a super boring place to visit.
RE: Fact #26 (Fat Controller Became Topham Hatt) – Just to be clear, he’s called Sir Topham Hatt in the books and the UK TV series, too. They didn’t just make up that name for the US version.
RE: Fact #13 (Cornelis Drebbel Took King Underwater) – I bet it is a very short list of monarchs who have ever been on a submarine.
RE: Fact #11 (Veronika Became First Tool-Using Cow) – There is a highway near me bordered by cow paddocks, and you can always see cow hair stuck to the barbed wire fences. Cows definitely know how to scratch themselves.
RE: Fact #22 (Oney Judge Escaped Presidential Enslavement) – She managed to reach New Hampshire and lived the rest of her life there, though she was never legally a free woman.
RE: Fact #3 (Victorinox Sales Collapsed After 9/11) – When I was a kid on a flight before 9/11, I found a brand-new Swiss Army knife in the seat pocket. It was the Victorinox Champion model that actually came with a magnifying glass. That was one of my best finds ever and I think I still have it tucked away. Every time I fly now, I still have this tiny urge to check the seat pocket for lost treasures.