1Lochness monster
A man confessed on his deathbed that the iconic Loch Ness Monster photograph was a hoax. His stepfather wanted revenge for being publicly humiliated regarding his claims to have spotted Nessie footprints- which turned out to be from a hippo-foot umbrella stand.
2. The legendary Athenian herald Pheidippides ran 40 km from Marathon to Athens after spending the previous two days running from Marathon to Sparta and back, a round-trip distance of 240 km! Arriving at Athens, he shouted "νικῶμεν!" ("We win!") and died.
3. The 1972 hit movie The Godfather does not contain the words ‘mafia’ or 'la cosa nostra’ because of a deal struck between the producer and the real mafia.
4. According to an index developed in 2015, Earth is not the most habitable planet found yet. Kepler-442b, a rocky near-Earth-sized exoplanet that is 1206 light-years away from Earth and orbits within its star's habitable zone, has a rating of 0.836. On the other hand, Earth has a rating of 0.829.
5. Boston College football wears a uniform every year with red bandana pattering in honor of alumni student Welles Crowther, who died saving 18 people on 9/11 while wearing a red bandana.
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6Kimi Räikkönen
F1 driver Kimi "Iceman" Räikkönen once had his car break down during the Monaco Grand Prix. After this, live TV showed him walking along the sidewalks with the helmet still on, straight to the harbor, where he climbed aboard his yacht.
7. During World War 1, medal of honor recipient Jake Allex, all alone and exposed, ran directly towards machine gun fire, neutralizing the turret. Out of bullets, he used his bayonet to kill five soldiers before it snapped. He then used his rifle butt to subdue the rest of the nest, capturing 15 prisoners, all by himself.
8. An English submarine on a combat patrol in World War 2 accepted a Russian reindeer as a gift. The reindeer spent six weeks at sea, slept under the captain's bed, and got fat off of condensed milk. It then spent the rest of its life in an English zoo.
9. In 1990, BBC’s Tomorrow’s World featured a white, sticky coating with astonishing heat-resisting properties, Starlite. In a demonstration, a raw egg painted with the stuff stayed raw in the heat of a blowtorch. The inventor died in 2011, having failed to strike a deal with any manufacturer.
10. In 1951, a 66-year old man named Gustaf Hakansson tried to register for a bicycle race that spanned the country of Sweden but was denied because of his age. He raced anyway, out of competition, and did the whole 1,764 km ride in six days, beating all other contestants.
11Mad honey
There is a kind of honey called “mad honey” and consuming it will cause hallucinations. People in Nepal venture through dangerous vertical climbs to gather it. It is priced at $60 per pound.
12. Constant interruptions from your smartphone can change your brain's chemistry to make you feel anxious and distracted. Notifications can trigger the release of a hormone called cortisol. This tenses muscles, increases heart rate and causes palms to become sweaty.
13. Despite being seriously ill at the siege of Acre in the Third Crusade, Richard I, better known as Richard the Lionheart, had his men carry him on a stretcher on the front lines so he could shoot enemies on the walls of the city with his crossbow.
14. The “n” in 7-ELEVEn is lowercase because the President’s wife thought the all-caps was too harsh and, with a lowercase letter, the logo looked more graceful.
15. Soul Superstar Curtis Mayfield ("Super Fly", "Move on Up", etc) was paralyzed from the neck down in an on-stage accident. Mayfield wrote and recorded his final album while paralyzed, lying flat or at a slant on the studio floor and singing a couple of lines at a time.
16Fly
Time is perceived differently among different creatures according to flicker fusion threshold. This is why it’s so hard to kill flies. Time is perceived 600% slower by them.
17. Egyptian pharaohs were often fat. They had high-sugar diets that were rich in bread, honey, beer, and wine. Examinations of various royal mummies show that many suffered from obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Hatshepsut, Egypt's most famous woman pharaoh, was obese and had tooth decay.
18. Seal milk is super rich in fat (75%) so the pups can grow really fast and survive in the extreme Arctic environment. Some seals can double their weights in 4 days.
19. Wearing paper clips was a symbol of rejecting Nazi ideals and racism during World War 2.
20. In 2019, a grandmother in Iowa was killed at a gender reveal party when the partygoers mistakenly built a pipe bomb instead of a clever gender reveal device.
21Fibonacci numbers
The Fibonacci numbers (1,1,2,3,5,8....) can be used to approximately convert miles to kilometers. 2 mi ≈ 3 km, 3 mi ≈ 5 km, etc.
22. If Batman & Robin was more successful, a sequel was already planned. Batman Unchained would have had Clooney and O'Donnell reprising their roles, with Scarecrow and Harley Quinn as the main villains, and cameos from past villains appearing as hallucinations due to Scarecrow's fear gas.
23. When Gene Kelly was asked to direct the movie The Sound of Music, he declined saying "Go find someone else to direct this piece of sh*t."
24. Bulgarian man Dobri Dobrev, also known as Grandpa Dobri, spent his life begging for money and donated all the money he collected to charities, orphanages, churches, and monasteries. He died in 2018, at the age of 103.
25. 7-Up used to contain Lithium citrate; a known mood stabilizer still used today to treat bipolar disorder and mania.