1 Adam DeVine Survived 42-Ton Truck
In 1995, at age 11, American actor Adam DeVine was hit by a 42-ton cement truck while walking his bicycle across a road in Omaha, Nebraska. The truck’s first two wheels rolled over him, and the crash broke every bone in both legs, collapsed one of his lungs, and left him in a coma for two weeks. DeVine underwent 26 surgeries, spent much of the next several years in a wheelchair, and eventually regained full mobility. Because a children’s hospital treated him after the accident, he now supports Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and visits young patients to share his story.
2. In 2013, Patrick Stewart and American singer Sunny Ozell held a secret legal wedding ceremony at a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, with Ian McKellen officiating. A couple of weeks later, McKellen also led their public wedding ceremony in Nevada. Stewart revealed in 2020 that the Nevada ceremony alone would not have been legally binding because McKellen’s ministry credentials were invalid in the state, making the restaurant ceremony their official marriage.
3. In 1783, a 16-year-old French cadet named Antoine de Phélippeaux met Napoleon Bonaparte at the École Militaire (military academy) in Paris. Napoleon resented Phélippeaux’s stronger classroom performance, and their quarrels became physical enough that a sergeant major was kicked while separating them. Roughly 15 years later, British colonel Phélippeaux strengthened Acre’s walls, built trenches, excavated its moat, and installed artillery captured from the French. The defenders forced Napoleon to abandon the 1799 Siege of Acre, handing him the first major strategic defeat of his military career.
4. Actor Tobey Maguire never told the producers of Spider-Man (2002) that he had claustrophobia before costume technicians covered him in plaster bandages for a full-body cast. As the plaster hardened around him, Maguire began to black out, forcing the crew to lower him to the floor, open the shell, and alert the producers themselves. Maguire then took home one of the first prototype Spider-Man suits and trained his body and mind to perform inside the tight foam-latex and spandex costume.
5. Highway hypnosis, also known as white line fever, is an altered mental state in which a driver can travel long distances safely and correctly without consciously remembering the journey. The driver’s attention shifts elsewhere while the brain continues processing road conditions and controlling the vehicle subconsciously, a process psychologists call automaticity. Monotonous scenery, repetitive lane markings, fatigue, and familiar roads can trigger the state, which leaves drivers slower to react when something unexpected happens.
6 Google Payments Keep Firefox Alive
Google has paid Mozilla more than $400 million a year to remain Firefox’s default search engine, with earlier reports estimating the annual deal at $400 million to $450 million. In May 2025, Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim testified that the Google agreement supplied roughly 85 percent of Firefox’s revenue. He warned that losing the payments would force Mozilla to cut Firefox development, potentially starting a downward spiral that could put the browser out of business. Mozilla had already told its board in December 2024 that losing Google’s money posed a serious threat to the organization’s survival.
7. In 2013, a woman rode her horse into the drive-through lane of a McDonald’s in Whitefield, Greater Manchester, but employees refused to serve her under company policy. Determined to place her order, she led the animal inside, where it defecated on the restaurant floor. Police said the sight and smell upset customers and staff, and officers issued the woman a fixed penalty notice for causing alarm and distress.
8. Biologists define an ancient lake as one that has continuously carried water for more than one million years. One widely cited catalog identifies only 20 ancient lakes worldwide, with 12 surviving for more than 2.6 million years, the entire Quaternary Period. Their long existence and isolation allow them to support high biodiversity and species found nowhere else. Russia’s Lake Baikal, estimated to be 25 to 30 million years old, remains the oldest lake supported by clear evidence.
9. When more than 8,600 German troops arrived on Staten Island in 1776, some Hessians struggled to understand why prosperous American colonists were rebelling against Britain. American historian Edward J. Lowell later wrote that “a colonist on Staten Island lived as comfortably as a German country gentleman,” making the rebellion seem extraordinary to soldiers from a far more rigid society. Many Germans expected Britain to crush the uprising within a year or two and saw little reason to accept American offers of land in exchange for deserting. Instead, the war lasted until 1783, and thousands of the roughly 30,000 German troops who served died in combat or from disease.
10. Around 1900 BC, an ancient Egyptian wall painting in the tomb of Djehutihotep showed workers hauling a huge statue on a sledge while a man at the front poured water onto the sand. In 2014, University of Amsterdam physicists recreated the transport method with a laboratory sledge and found that the correct amount of water halved the force required to pull it. The water formed tiny bridges between the sand grains, making the surface about twice as stiff and preventing sand from piling up in front of the sledge.
11 Zombie-Ant Fungus Hijacks Muscle Fibers
The zombie-ant fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis does not control carpenter ants by filling their brains with fungal cells. Penn State researchers used 3-D electron microscopy and artificial intelligence to map infected ants, finding fungal cells throughout their bodies and surrounding and invading their muscle fibers. The connected cells formed a network that may manipulate the ants’ legs and mandibles like a puppeteer pulling strings. Researchers found no fungal cells inside the brain, although the parasite may still alter it chemically.
12. Two Iowa brothers named Morgan and Mason McGrew spent eight years recreating the entirety of Toy Story 3 in stop motion with real toys. They filmed Toy Story 3 in Real Life on iPhones, matched the original movie shot for shot except for scenes involving human characters, and reused its original audio. After Walt Disney Studios gave them permission to release the project online, they uploaded the completed film to YouTube in 2020.
13. In October 1604, light from a Type Ia supernova appeared in the Milky Way’s constellation Ophiuchus, becoming the latest supernova in our galaxy unquestionably observed with the naked eye. At its peak, Kepler’s Supernova outshone every star in the night sky and remained visible during daylight for more than three weeks, then stayed visible at night for 18 months. European, Chinese, Korean, and Arabic observers recorded the event, while German astronomer Johannes Kepler tracked it for an entire year and published his findings in 1606. No later supernova has been observed with certainty in the Milky Way.
14. In April 1912, Haitian engineer Joseph Laroche, the Titanic’s only documented Black passenger, exchanged his family’s first-class tickets aboard the SS France for second-class passage on the Titanic because the other ship would not let their children dine with them. He boarded on April 10 with his pregnant French wife, a woman named Juliette Lafargue, and their two young daughters, Simone and Louise. After the Titanic struck an iceberg on April 14, he woke his family and carried the sleeping children to the upper deck. Juliette and the girls escaped in a lifeboat and survived, but 25-year-old Laroche died in the sinking, and his body was never recovered.
15. In 1973, NASA sent two common cross spiders named Anita and Arabella aboard Skylab 3 to test whether spiders could build webs in weightlessness. A high school student proposed the experiment, which showed that the spiders adapted and successfully spun webs during the 59-day mission. Both spiders died in space, but astronauts returned their remains and the experiment equipment to Earth. Anita’s body now sits preserved in formalin at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.
16 Cow Tipping Defies Practical Physics
Cow tipping, the supposed prank of sneaking up on a standing cow and pushing it over, is widely considered an urban legend. Cows lie down for deep sleep, remain alert while standing, weigh more than 450 kilograms, and can brace their legs or simply move away. A 2005 analysis estimated that at least four to six people would need to generate the required force against a non-reacting cow, while another calculation raised the number to between 10 and 14 people. Researchers concluded that a real attempt would probably fail once the cow noticed what was happening and resisted.
17. After World War II, Japanese General Hitoshi Imamura faced an Australian military court in Papua New Guinea for failing to control troops who committed atrocities under his command. The court sentenced him to 10 years, which he served at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo until his release in 1954. Believing the punishment was too light for his responsibility, Imamura built a replica of the prison in his garden and voluntarily confined himself there until his death in 1968.
18. In 2014, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Ace Bayou Corp. recalled about 2.2 million bean-bag chairs after two children died inside them. The chairs had two working zippers that children could open, allowing them to crawl among the polystyrene foam beads and become trapped. A 13-year-old boy from McKinney, Texas, and a 3-year-old girl from Lexington, Kentucky, suffocated from a lack of air and inhaled the foam beads. Officials told owners to keep the chairs away from children and obtain a free repair kit that permanently disabled the zippers.
19. In September 2019, a 41-year-old British firefighter named Adam Martin got popcorn stuck in a back tooth after watching a movie with his wife in Cornwall, England. For three days, he tried to remove it with a pen lid, toothpick, piece of wire, and metal nail, damaging the surrounding gum. A week later, he developed night sweats, fatigue, and headaches, and doctors eventually diagnosed endocarditis and found that the infection had damaged his heart. Martin underwent a seven-hour operation to repair his mitral valve and replace his aortic valve, and he believed the injured gum caused the infection.
20. In 2016, an NIH study reported on 16 contestants from Season 8 of the American reality show The Biggest Loser, which aired in 2009. Most quickly regained their lost weight, and some became heavier than they had been before entering the competition. Even six years later, their metabolisms had not recovered, leaving them burning hundreds fewer calories each day than other people of the same reduced size. After researchers published the findings, former contestants demanded that NBC cancel the show.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Storm Oil Tamed Rough Seas
Sailors once poured storm oil onto the ocean during rough weather to weaken waves and make navigation or sea rescues safer. The nearly water-insoluble oil spread into a thin surface layer, absorbed some wave energy, and reduced the wind’s grip on the water. Steamships and lifeboats in many countries had to carry it into the late 20th century, while Britain’s Merchant Shipping Act 1894 kept the requirement for British vessels until 1998. Crews often used inexpensive vegetable or fish oil.
22. While filming Phenomena in 1984, a chimpanzee named Tanga first scarred actress Daria Nicolodi with a blunted straight razor, then attacked Connelly (who was just 13) and bit off part of one finger. Tanga continued acting aggressively toward Connelly afterward, forcing the production to use a body double for some scenes.
23. Whales produce milk as thick as toothpaste, preventing it from dispersing through the water like a thinner liquid. Nearly half of the milk consists of fat, giving calves the energy to grow rapidly and develop insulating blubber. Most whale mothers squirt it directly into a calf’s mouth, while sperm whale calves collect the thick milk from the surrounding water. This rich diet can help a calf gain up to 100 kilograms per day.
24. The MIT Science Fiction Society maintains the world’s largest public open-shelf collection of science fiction. Anyone can browse its science fiction, fantasy, magazines, foreign-language material, and related books whenever the library is open. Membership is also open to anyone, allowing members to borrow books from the circulating section.
25. Despite their name, centipedes can never have exactly 100 legs. Every species develops an odd number of leg pairs, while 100 legs would require the even number of 50 pairs. Known centipedes have between 15 and 191 leg pairs, with one pair attached to each leg-bearing body segment. Due to a genetic quirk, their biology prevents that literal count.
