1 Guitar Hero Beat Aerosmith’s Albums
American rock band Aerosmith made more money from licensing its songs and image for Guitar Hero: Aerosmith than from any one of its albums. The band licensed 29 songs to Activision, and the game sold nearly 600,000 copies and generated more than US$25 million in its first week. It eventually sold over four million copies, while Aerosmith’s 2004 album Honkin’ on Bobo sold about 160,000 copies and grossed roughly US$2 million during its first week.
2. In 1881, American-born scientific illustrator Fanny Angelina Hesse suggested that her husband, German physician Walther Hesse, replace the gelatin in his microbe experiments with agar, a jelly ingredient from her kitchen. Gelatin melted in the summer heat and could be consumed by microbes, while agar stayed solid at high temperatures and resisted degradation. Walther shared the idea with German bacteriologist Robert Koch, who used agar in his research but failed to credit the Hesses when he discussed it in 1882. Agar became essential in laboratories worldwide, yet Fanny received little recognition for introducing it to microbiology.
3. On October 19, 1987, the S&P 500 plunged 20.47% in a single trading day, the only time in modern market history it has lost more than 20% in one session. Fears about overvalued stocks, rising interest rates, and US trade and budget deficits had already shaken investors, while computer-driven portfolio insurance likely accelerated the sell-off. The Federal Reserve supplied emergency liquidity after the crash, and the S&P 500 finally regained its pre-crash high on July 26, 1989.
4. More than 30 million years ago, the ancestors of modern South American monkeys reached the Americas by accidentally crossing the Atlantic Ocean on floating mats of vegetation and earth. Scientists believe storms swept monkeys from the African coast onto natural rafts before currents carried the survivors across an ocean that was then only 930 to 1,300 miles wide. Four 32-million-year-old fossil teeth found in Peru suggest that an extinct African primate group called parapithecids made the same journey separately, meaning monkeys may have rafted across the Atlantic at least twice.
5. Texidor’s twinge, better known as precordial catch syndrome, is a brief and harmless chest pain that can feel like a tiny invisible needle stabbing between the ribs. The malfunctioning jump-scare usually strikes while a person is resting, lasts between 30 seconds and 3 minutes, and becomes sharper with a deep breath. Doctors do not know its exact cause, although irritation of an intercostal nerve or the chest wall may be responsible. It most commonly affects children ages 6 to 12, does not come from the heart, and usually disappears without treatment.
6 Children’s Games Preserved Ninety Pastimes
Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder filled his 1560 painting Children’s Games with more than 90 games played by children of his time. Toddlers and adolescents crowd the scene while rolling hoops, walking on stilts, playing leapfrog, blowing bubbles, wrestling, shooting water guns, and playing hide-and-seek. Many of these activities remain familiar sights during children’s recess more than 460 years later. The oil-on-panel painting now hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
7. In parking garages across Germany, spaces marked Frauenparkplatz designate safer locations for women near entrances and exits, beneath brighter lights, and within view of surveillance cameras. They began appearing in the early 1990s after violent assaults in underground and multistory parking garages prompted calls for better protection. Some are also wider, giving women more room when handling strollers or children.
8. After ABC canceled Batman in 1968, NBC agreed to revive it for a fourth season. Before production could begin, the network discovered that hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of Batman sets had already been destroyed. Rather than rebuild them, NBC dropped the project, ending the show’s comeback.
9. In 1982, a 19-year-old University of Texas at Austin student named Gregory Watson wrote a paper arguing that a congressional pay amendment proposed in 1789 could still be ratified because it had no deadline. His teaching assistant gave the paper a C, and professor Sharon Waite upheld the grade, prompting Watson to write to lawmakers across the country to prove them wrong. After 10 years of campaigning, Michigan supplied the decisive 38th state ratification in 1992, turning the proposal into the 27th Amendment. In 2017, 35 years after Watson wrote the paper, Waite officially changed his C to an A.
10. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Australian sprinter Peter Norman won silver in the 200 meters and stood beside American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos during their Black Power salute. Norman supported their human rights protest by wearing an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge and even suggested that they share one pair of black gloves after Carlos forgot his. He faced ridicule after returning to Australia and never competed in another Olympics. When Norman died in 2006, Smith and Carlos delivered eulogies and carried his coffin as pallbearers.
11 King Vajiralongkorn Became Wealthiest Monarch
Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn, also known as Rama X, is considered the world’s wealthiest monarch, with estimates placing his fortune between US$30 billion and US$70 billion. Although he has ruled Thailand since 2016, he has spent much of his adulthood living in Bavaria, Germany, and owns a villa beside Lake Starnberg. His long stays there have attracted scrutiny, with German officials warning that he must not conduct Thai state business from German soil.
12. In October 1921, the U.S. Army exhumed one unidentified World War I soldier from each of four American cemeteries in France so one could be buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Officials destroyed every document connected to the remains, shuffled the four caskets at random, and ensured that none of the men could ever be identified. On October 24, decorated veteran Sergeant Edward F. Younger selected one casket by laying a spray of white roses on it. The chosen soldier was carried to Arlington National Cemetery, while the other three were reburied at Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in France.
13. In 2024, Pantex became the largest employer in the Texas Panhandle after expanding its workforce to 4,626 people. Located on a 16,000-acre site 20 miles northeast of Amarillo, it serves as the United States’ primary facility for assembling and dismantling nuclear weapons. The growth followed a workload increase of more than 70% as the plant worked to maintain the safety, security, and reliability of the country’s nuclear stockpile.
14. In 1767, a mysterious man named Scepan Mali gained support in Montenegro after rumors identified him as deposed Russian emperor Peter III, who had actually died in 1762. Scepan never confirmed the claim, but he used it to become Montenegro’s absolute ruler in 1768, calm its feuding clans, and introduce social, administrative, and religious reforms. A Russian delegation exposed him as a fraud and briefly imprisoned him in 1769, only to release and restore him after deciding he was the country’s most competent potential ruler. The Montenegrins welcomed him back despite the deception, and he completed a five-year reign before a servant bribed by the Ottomans murdered him in 1773.
15. In 1967, English drummer Keith Moon of The Who bribed a stagehand on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour to load gunpowder into one of his bass drums. The stagehand used about 10 times the standard amount, and Moon detonated it during the finale of My Generation. The blast singed Pete Townshend’s hair and drove a piece of shattered cymbal into Moon’s arm, while footage of the stunt later opened the film The Kids Are Alright.
16 Black-Hole Mergers Face Final Parsec
When two galaxies merge, dynamical friction slows their central supermassive black holes until they orbit within a few parsecs of each other. By then, they may have flung away the surrounding stars and gas needed to drain more energy, leaving them stalled around one parsec, or 3.26 light-years, apart and too distant for gravitational waves to finish the merger. Yet supermassive black holes appear to merge anyway, creating the cosmic mystery known as the final parsec problem. Astronomers still debate whether fresh stars or gas, self-interacting dark matter, eccentric orbits, or a third black hole pushes them across the gap.
17. In 1850, British physician George Merryweather developed the tempest prognosticator, a leech-powered barometer that used 12 leeches to warn of approaching storms. Each leech lived in its own bottle and, when disturbed by atmospheric conditions, tried to climb into a metal tube, dislodging a piece of whalebone that made a hammer strike a bell. The more often the bell rang, the more likely Merryweather considered a storm. He displayed an elaborate version at London’s Great Exhibition in 1851, but the British government chose Robert FitzRoy’s storm glass instead.
18. After Ohio State losses or ties, American college football coach Woody Hayes conducted his locker-room interviews completely naked. A journalist who covered his 28-season tenure later explained, “He was an ugly guy, so it would clear the locker room out pretty fast.”
19. Uzbekistan’s massive solar furnace uses 10,700 curved mirrors to focus sunlight into a single beam that can reach 3,000 C (5,432 F). Located in Parkent, 45 kilometers from Tashkent, the 1-megawatt facility was built between 1981 and 1987 in a mountain region that receives sunlight about 270 days each year. Its concentrated heat can test materials for spacecraft reentry, synthesize nanomaterials, and produce hydrogen fuel without creating combustion pollution at the point of use.
20. Deep-fryer fires in the United States kill an average of 5 people, injure 60, destroy 900 homes, and cause more than US$15 million in property damage each year. Turkey fryers pose a particular danger because they can tip over, overheat without automatic thermostat controls, or spill oil onto an open burner. Dropping a partially frozen turkey into hot oil can also trigger a violent spillover, which is why firefighters warn people to use fryers outdoors and away from buildings.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Martin Luther Ordered Peasants Slaughtered
German theologian Martin Luther is often remembered for empowering ordinary believers, but during the 1525 German Peasants’ War he urged nobles to crush the rebels after condemning their violence. In Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, he told authorities to “smite, slay, and stab,” and many rebels surrendered after realizing he would not support them. In 1526, after princely armies had defeated the revolt, Luther wrote, “I, Martin Luther, have during the rebellion slain all the peasants, for it was I who ordered them to be struck dead.” He added, “All their blood is upon my neck. But I put it on our Lord God, for he commanded me to speak thus.”
22. Narwhals and beluga whales can mate and produce hybrid offspring called narlugas. Scientists confirmed the first known specimen in 2019 by sequencing a skull obtained from an Inuk hunter in Greenland, revealing that its mother was a narwhal and its father was a beluga. The hybrid had 18 spiraled teeth and apparently fed along the seafloor. Researchers suspect that narlugas themselves are probably infertile.
23. In November 1983, NATO ran Able Archer 83, a command exercise that rehearsed escalation from conventional warfare to a simulated nuclear strike. Its unusually realistic procedures led Soviet leaders to fear that the exercise might conceal preparations for a real attack, prompting heightened alerts for nuclear-capable aircraft in East Germany and Poland. A 1990 investigation by the US President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board concluded that the exercise may have placed US-Soviet relations on a hair trigger. The board’s 109-page report, titled The Soviet War Scare, remained classified until 2015.
24. In the 1970s, Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard refused to place player names on jerseys because he wanted fans to buy game programs to match numbers with identities. When the NHL required names for the 1977-78 season and threatened a fine, Ballard ordered white names on white jerseys and blue names on blue jerseys, making them nearly impossible to read. The Leafs wore the blue-on-blue version during a game on February 26, 1978, before further league sanctions forced Ballard to use contrasting white letters.
25. Former Bulgarian tsar Simeon II and Tibetan spiritual leader the 14th Dalai Lama are the only living people (as of November 2026) who served as symbolic heads of state during World War II. Simeon inherited Bulgaria’s throne at age 6 in 1943, while the Dalai Lama was enthroned in Tibet at age 4 in 1940. Because both were children, regency governments exercised political power on their behalf. Simeon later returned from exile and served as Bulgaria’s prime minister from 2001 to 2005.
