Random Fact Sheet #270 – 35 Most Unusual Facts You’ll Ever Discover

Pilates was developed by German boxer and circus performer Joseph Pilates while he was in a British internment camp during World War 1. He developed the system in the camp for four years with minimal equipment by working on his fellow internees.

27. A dog named Swansea Jack saved a total of 27 people during her lifetime from drowning in the River Tawe in Wales. He was awarded a silver cup by the Mayor of London and to this day is the only dog to have been awarded two bronze medals by the National Canine Defence League. He was named ‘Dog of the Century’ after his death.

28. The first victim of the American Revolution was a man of African and Native American descent named Crispus Attucks, who according to some historians might have even been a free American citizen.

29. A recent study found that those who “troll online” are high in cognitive empathy and psychopathy. This suggests that trolls employ an empathic strategy of predicting and recognizing the emotional suffering of their victims in order to “troll” them.

30. During Benjamin Franklin’s famous kite experiment, the kite was not struck by visible lightning. Had it been, Franklin would almost certainly have been killed. Instead, he noticed loose threads on the kite string were repelling each other and there was a spark when he moved his hand near the key.

A German socialist politician named Ernst Thalmann downplayed the rise of Nazism because he thought centrism was the real enemy. When the Nazis came to power, they imprisoned him in a concentration camp, destroyed his political party, and finally killed him ten years later.

32. Europe and Asia aren't actually continents but are two parts of one large continent called Eurasia. The division between Europe and Asia is a historical social construct that originated from the Ancient Greeks. 

33. Prometheus had a brother, Epimetheus, and that their names are references to human intellect. Prometheus (meaning "fore-thinker") is a smart trickster while Epimetheus (meaning "afterthinker") is foolish. Plato used the brothers to argue that nature has no meaning, humans are just afterthinkers.

34. 92% of people can only breathe through one nostril at a time and the "dominant nostril" switches several times per day.

35. “Burrito” is Spanish for “little donkey”. It is named so because it can hold many things, like a donkey can.