1Neelimkumar Khaire
A man named Neelimkumar Khaire set a world record in 1986 by spending 72 hours in a cage with 72 of the most venomous snake species in India; to spread awareness and to prove that snakes don't bite unless provoked. He came out of the cage, unharmed and without a single bite.
2. Penn Jillette said in an interview that a big part of Penn & Teller's success and longevity is due to their never having been close friends.
3. The 1992 US Olympics basketball team (the "Dream Team") has been called "the most dominant squad ever assembled in any sport". Magic Johnson said "I look to my right, there's Michael Jordan ... I look to my left, there's Charles Barkley or Larry Bird ... I didn't know who to throw the ball to!"
4. After the first 4 episodes of Seinfeld aired in the summer of 1990, NBC took a leap of faith and ordered 13 more. Larry David said, "I don't have any more stories to tell, Jerry turn the order down." Jerry didn't listen and said "Yes" to the pickup.
5. 80% of American toys are made in China's Pearl River Delta, employing 3 million people in 8,000 factories.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6The Room film
In the original script for 'The Room,' there was a subplot which would reveal that Tommy Wiseau's character Johnny was, in fact, a vampire.
7. In 2004, a customer in Las Vegas walked into an In-N-Out and ordered a 100x100. That's 100 beef patties and 100 slices of cheese, which the restaurant obliged as until then they accommodated orders of any size at extra cost. Since then In-N-Out changed its rules and capped the burger at 4x4.
8. An empty tomb or monument erected in honor of a person whose remains are elsewhere is called a "Cenotaph." For example, there are Cenotaphs all over the world for victims of the RMS Titanic, whose bodies were not recovered after the sinking.
9. The first monkeys in South America likely drifted from Africa on a floating island of vegetation.
10. A Scottish psychiatrist named Ewen Cameron ran experiments on humans in the 50s, which involved giving several electric shocks a week, taping blacked out football helmets to their heads and playing repetitive messages in their ears for months at a time. Some patients apparently forgot who they were and how to talk.
11Jerusalem
Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.
12. NASA pilots routinely intercepted and defeated U.S. Navy Phantom IIs in mock dogfights, until complaints from the Navy put an end to the harassment.
13. When Luxembourg was liberated from Nazism in 1944, the returning government was so impressed with some regulations and laws concerning tax and employment the Nazis had made, that it decided to simply keep them.
14. The Forbidden City, built in 1420 in China, was so well-designed that it withstood over 200 earthquakes and can withstand one with a of magnitude 10.1 on the Richter scale.
15. In 2014, a family in Missouri had to leave their $450,000 home after it was infested with 4,500 - 6,000 brown recluse spiders and exterminators were unable to get rid of them.
16John Harrison
John Harrison is the only person to be both the child (William Henry Harrison) and the parent (Benjamin Harrison) of U.S. Presidents.
17. Banner blindness is a phenomenon where web users sub consciously ignore information on web pages from ad-like banners.
18. Deborah Sampson who disguised herself as a man to fight in the U.S. Revolutionary War served in an elite Light Infantry unit and was wounded in battle. After her secret was discovered, she was honorably discharged but had to fight to receive her veteran's pension.
19. Simon Cowell praised Rebecca Black's song "Friday": "the fact that it's making people so angry is brilliant". He advised her to not "listen to anyone over the age of 18. I'm being deadly serious. Whatever she's done has worked ... she's the most talked-about artist in America right now".
20. Moths make up a large portion of Yellowstone bears' diets, and they can eat up to 20,000 calories worth of moths in a day.
21Sultan Ibrahim I
The Ottoman Empire's Sultan Ibrahim I had 280 of his concubines drowned in the ocean after one of them slept with another man.
22. Anne Frank only assumed that her father was killed in the concentration camps and that a childhood friend of hers stated that if she knew he was still alive she believed Anne would have summoned the courage to survive.
23. Search and rescue dogs searching for survivors after 9/11 would experience depression-like symptoms because they couldn't find survivors, only bodies.
24. During O.J. Simpson's 1995 verdict announcement for murder, long-distance calls declined by 58%, trading on the New York Stock Exchange decreased by 41%, water usage decreased, and there was an estimated $480 million in lost productivity due to work stopping.
25. Planktons perform 45% of Earth's photosynthesis, yet constitute less than 1% of its total plant mass.