26 Ruby Red Squirt Triggered Bromoderma
A 63-year-old man who drank 8 liters of Ruby Red Squirt every day for several months developed tender, ulcerated red nodules on his hands and fingers. Doctors found that his blood contained nearly twice the normal upper limit of bromine and diagnosed bromoderma, a rare skin reaction traced to the brominated vegetable oil in the soft drink. After he stopped drinking it and received colchicine, the lesions disappeared within four months and did not return after treatment ended.
27. More than 40% of Yemen’s renewable water is used to grow qat, a drought-resistant shrub containing mild amphetamine-like stimulants. Its leaves are widely chewed across the country, while its two-week harvest cycle makes qat one of the few reliably profitable crops for many farmers. Yet irrigation greatly increases its yield, causing scarce water to be diverted from food crops in one of the world’s most water-scarce countries. As drought worsens, qat survives while other crops fail, encouraging further cultivation and deepening Yemen’s water and hunger crises.
28. At the height of the dot-com boom in January 2000, AOL announced a $180 billion merger with Time Warner, the media conglomerate that owned Warner Bros. By the time the deal closed in January 2001, technology stocks had collapsed, AOL’s dial-up business was losing ground to broadband, and the companies’ promised synergies failed to materialize. In January 2003, AOL Time Warner reported a $98.7 billion net loss for 2002, then the largest annual corporate loss ever recorded. Time Warner removed AOL from its name later that year and spun off the internet company in 2009, leaving the deal widely regarded as one of history’s worst mergers.
29. The rete ovarii, an auxiliary secretory organ in women, was first described in 1870 and appeared in early editions of Gray’s Anatomy, but it later disappeared from many textbooks and was often dismissed as a functionless ovarian remnant. In 2025, researchers studying mice found that its three interconnected regions persist into adulthood, contain secreted proteins, and transport fluid toward the ovary. Its connections to nerves and blood vessels suggest that it may act as a sensory and secretory structure supporting ovarian development and maintenance. Although the rete ovarii also exists in humans, its proposed function as an auxiliary organ in women remains unconfirmed.
30. After The Empire Strikes Back (1980) opened in approximately 100 theaters on May 21, George Lucas decided its ending did not clearly show that Luke and Leia were aboard a medical frigate while Lando and Chewbacca occupied the Millennium Falcon. ILM used the three weeks before the wider 35mm release to create three new effect shots establishing the positions of the two ships, while editors extended the score and altered how some dialogue sounded. Wider audiences therefore saw a subtly different ending.
31 Project 816 Never Produced Plutonium
During the Cold War, China spent 17 years secretly hollowing out a mountain in Chongqing for Project 816, an underground complex meant to produce plutonium for atomic bombs. Some 60,000 soldiers carved more than 20 kilometers of caverns, roads, tunnels, and passages into the rock. China halted the project in 1984 with construction 85 percent complete. No nuclear material ever passed through the facility. The site was later declassified and opened to tourists.
32. For Titanic, James Cameron’s crew built a 775-foot reproduction of the liner with only its starboard side completed. The real ship boarded passengers at Southampton from its port side, so the production filmed the sequence on the starboard set and flipped the footage horizontally. To make the mirrored image look correct, room numbers and lettering were reversed, while buttons on men’s shirts were reattached to close from the opposite side.
33. Helen Keller joined the Socialist Party of America in 1909 and campaigned for working-class causes until 1921. She also supported women’s suffrage, pacifism, and labor rights while backing Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs. In 1920, Keller helped found the American Civil Liberties Union.
34. After Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote a second book in 1928, but it was not published during his lifetime. Known as Zweites Buch, it recorded his unedited thoughts on foreign policy and expanded upon ideas involving Lebensraum, alliances, and Germany’s future enemies. The manuscript was first published in German in 1961, alongside an English translation titled Hitler’s Secret Book.
35. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) originally portrayed the Buellers as a family of four siblings: Ferris, Jeanie, 12-year-old Kimberly, and 7-year-old Todd. Kimberly and Todd, played by Hannah Cutrona and Josh Peden, were removed from the final cut, although children’s drawings and a framed family photograph still reveal their presence. The official trailer even retains a deleted shot of Kimberly asking whether Ferris has “syphilitic meningitis.”
36 Tristan’s Policeman Made Zero Arrests
Between 1988 and 2010, Tristan da Cunha’s sole police officer, Conrad Glass, did not make a single arrest. The remote South Atlantic island had approximately 270 residents and almost no crime, with only one holding cell available. Glass carried handcuffs, a truncheon, and pepper spray but never needed to use the cell during his 22 years on the job.
37. About 955 million years ago, the Laurentian Mountains rose across what is now Canada and may have rivaled today’s Himalayas in height. Hundreds of millions of years of erosion wore the range almost down to its roots. Later, continental glaciers up to two kilometers thick further flattened the terrain, carved valleys, and created the lake-filled landscape now seen in Quebec’s La Mauricie National Park.
38. According to the Bank of England, most money in the UK economy is created by commercial banks when they issue loans, not by printing presses. When a bank grants a £100 loan, it credits the borrower’s account with £100 in new deposit money that did not previously exist. Repaying the loan deletes that electronic money, meaning banks create money rather than wealth. Banks create around 80% of the UK’s money this way, although regulations, capital requirements, and payment obligations limit their lending.
39. A man in his 40s adopted a carnivore diet that included 6 to 9 pounds of cheese, sticks of butter, and extra fat added to his daily hamburgers. After about eight months, painless yellow cholesterol deposits called xanthomas appeared on his palms, soles, elbows, and even his eyelids. His cholesterol exceeded 1,000 mg/dL, compared with his previous range of 210 to 300 mg/dL.
40. Solomon’s paradox describes how people can give reasonable advice to others but fail to apply this advice to their own situation. However, researchers discovered that participants eliminated this gap by practicing “self-distancing” and viewing their own situations from a third-person perspective.
41 New York Times Shunned Crosswords
In 1924, The New York Times dismissed crossword puzzles as a “sinful waste” and a “primitive sort of mental exercise,” then refused to publish them for nearly two decades. After Pearl Harbor, a December 1941 memo argued that readers would need relaxation and something to occupy them during bleak blackout hours. The newspaper finally published its first Sunday crossword on February 15, 1942, before making the puzzle a daily feature in 1950.
42. According to story co-writer David S. Goyer, The Dark Knight Rises (2012) modeled its central comeback arc on Rocky III (1982). He and director Christopher Nolan wanted an aging, physically frail Bruce Wayne to be defeated by an opponent who was physically superior, then struggle back to his feet. That premise led Goyer to suggest Bane, although Nolan initially considered the character silly. Goyer later said they were “literally” retelling Rocky III.
43. In 2018, Australian brewer Carlton & United Breweries withdrew a Yak Ales advertisement after an advertising standards panel ruled that it vilified redheads, but the company did not apologize. The campaign claimed a “Ginger Gene” was spreading through its beer and offered $500 to anyone who found a hidden bottle of Rusty Yak Gingery Ale and helped “prevent its spread.” The panel found that the advertisement portrayed red hair as undesirable and was likely to encourage ridicule. The brewer pulled the campaign while insisting it was merely an affectionate, light-hearted joke.
44. About 5,500 years ago, prehistoric people repeatedly climbed to Cova 338, a cave 2,235 meters above sea level in the eastern Pyrenees in Europe, apparently to collect and fire-process copper-bearing rock. Archaeologists found 23 hearths filled with crushed, deliberately burned fragments resembling malachite, suggesting visitors returned on planned expeditions for about two thousand years. If further testing confirms the mineral and its purpose, the cave could represent an unusually early high-altitude copper-mining camp in Europe.
45. After completing Red Dawn (2012), MGM reportedly spent less than $1 million changing the invading army from Chinese to North Korean. Filmmakers altered the opening sequence, re-edited two scenes, substituted dialogue, and digitally replaced Chinese flags and military symbols with North Korean versions. MGM made the change to protect its access to China’s lucrative film market, but the movie was never released there.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 Fanny Blankers-Koen Won Four Golds
At the 1948 London Olympics, 30-year-old Dutch mother of two Fanny Blankers-Koen won four track-and-field gold medals despite critics saying she was too old to compete and should stay home with her children. She took gold in the 100 meters, 200 meters, 80-meter hurdles, and 4 x 100-meter relay, becoming the first woman to win four Olympic titles at a single Games. She returned to Amsterdam as a national hero, riding through the city before an immense crowd and earning the nickname “The Flying Housewife.”
47. Before settling on the name Nirvana, Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic joined Melvins drummer Dale Crover to record 10 songs at Seattle’s Reciprocal Recording studio on January 23, 1988. The session lasted about six hours, but producer Jack Endino charged them for only five, leaving Cobain with a bill of $152.44. That same evening, the band performed at Tacoma’s Community World Theatre under the name Ted Ed Fred.
48. In 1979, eight East Germans from two families crossed the Iron Curtain in a homemade hot-air balloon built with taffeta, a sewing machine, a motorcycle-engine blower, propane tanks, and a homemade flamethrower. The successful balloon used 1,250 square meters of fabric. After a 28-minute nighttime flight, the families landed near Naila in West Germany.
49. The first British edition of Moby-Dick, published in 1851 as The Whale, omitted the epilogue explaining that narrator Ishmael survived the destruction of the Pequod. The reason remains unknown, although scholars believe the printer probably lost it while rearranging other material. Some British reviewers consequently mocked the apparent absurdity of a story narrated by a man who had drowned with everyone else, while the American edition published a month later included the missing epilogue.
50. Before powered human flight, toys recognizable as modern paper airplanes were commonly called paper darts, paper gliders, or paper kites. An 1864 children’s book included instructions for a familiar folded design 39 years before the Wright brothers’ first powered flight. The term “paper aeroplane” appeared during the 1890s, but “plane” did not fully replace “dart” until the 1950s and 1960s.
