1Cardiac pacemakers
In the 60s and 70s, nuclear-powered cardiac pacemakers were used, containing a tiny amount of plutonium encased in epoxy and titanium to resist the person from gunshots or cremation. In 2003, over 50 living people still had them. If a coroner finds one, they are supposed to return it to Los Alamos for disposal.
2. Among the thousands of men on the Normandy beaches on D-Day, there was one single woman named Martha Gellhorn. She was a rogue war correspondent who stowed away in the toilet of a hospital ship. She was also the third wife of Ernest Hemingway.
3. A tiger's roar is so loud that is can be heard from over 2 miles away and can reach up to 114 decibels, which is about as loud as a jet airplane taking off.
4. Dr. Dolittle, the star of a series of lighthearted children's books about a guy who could talk to animals, was dreamt up by British author Hugh Lofting while in the gruesome carnage of the trenches of World War 1, as a distraction, in letters to his children.
5. When a pit bull mix named Dosha was hit by a car, she was shot in the head by a police officer to stop the dog’s suffering. At the animal control center, her body was put in a freezer, but a couple of hours later, she was found alive. She was taken into surgery and survived the ordeal.
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6The Sound of Music
The song "Edelweiss" in "The Sound of Music" was written for the musical, but sounded so much like a classic folk song that after the first performances, native Austrians said they were delighted to "hear that old folk tune again."
7. Hans Zimmer isolated himself for 30 days in his apartment to help him compose the soundtrack for the Interstellar movie.
8. The box office flop "Idiocracy" (2006) was released in a few theaters as possible by 20th Century Fox so as to not offend the negatively portrayed advertisers in the movie. Fox then planned, and succeeded, in recuperating its budget by purposefully making the movie garner a cult following.
9. The probability of you drinking a glass of water that contains a molecule of water that also passed through a dinosaur (urinated out) is almost 100%.
10. When the lone male in a group of bluehead wrasse fish dies, the largest female transforms into a male and resumes the male’s duties.
11Spartacus
Spartacus led his escape from his ludus/slavery by gathering about 70 slaves who seized kitchen utensils to fight their way free. They then seized several wagons of gladiatorial weapons and armor. They defeated legions that chased after them and eventually swelled their numbers to about 70,000.
12. Power lines look like terrifying bursts of light to animals that perceive UV light.
13. If an American citizen intends to visit Canada but in the past has committed an act that could be considered an indictable offense in Canada, they may be classified as criminally inadmissible. This includes driving under the influence. Canadian border force has full access to the FBI criminal database.
14. Euler's work in mathematics and physics touched upon so many fields that he is often the earliest written reference on a given matter. In an effort to avoid naming everything after Euler, some discoveries and theorems are attributed to the first person to have proved them after Euler.
15. The phrase 'pulling out all the stops', meaning to use all the resources or force at one's disposal, comes from organ-playing, where it means to literally pull out every knob to play all the pipes at once, thereby creating the fullest possible sound.
16Bicameral theory
According to bicameral hypothesis, humans have been a self-aware and conscious species for only a few thousand years. It's based on the overwhelming absence of introspection and meditation in very ancient texts.
17. Pickles work as a palate cleanser by sweeping fat away from your taste buds allowing you to taste the food like it was your first bite.
18. In the 1940s the musicians of America went on strike against major recording companies. Eventually, the major labels ran out of a back catalog to release and settled with the musicians, but the years without royalties effectively ended the big band era.
19. Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" was used to train medical professionals to provide the right number of chest compressions per minute while performing CPR, due to its bassline having a tempo close to that recommended by the British Heart Foundation.
20. On New Year's Eve, paramedics in New Orleans, Louisiana are required to wear Kevlar infused combat helmets for the 15 minutes before and after midnight because of the frequency of falling bullets.
21North Africa
There was a plan in the 1920s/30s to dam the Mediterranean Sea, create a series of hydroelectric dams, lower sea levels and make North Africa more fertile. It was imagined by a German who wanted to avoid another world war for resources, land, and energy by providing plentiful resources for Europe.
22. During the 1983 Byford Dolphin diving bell accident, a human error caused a decompression chamber inside an oil rig to go from 9 atmospheres of pressure to 1 in less than a second. Out of the 5 dead, one was ripped apart so violently pieces of him were found over 30 feet away.
23. George R.R. Martin made Game of Thrones show creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff correctly guess the identity of Jon Snow's mother before he allowed them to adapt his novels.
24. There is a freshwater parasite called Naegleria fowleri that can enter your brain through your nasal cavity while swimming in freshwater lakes/poorly sanitized pools. The parasite destroys human brain tissue and is over 97% fatal within days.
25. Pizza Hut delivered a pizza to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, gaining a Guinness World Record for highest altitude pizza.
