1Andrew Wakefield
The Doctor (Andrew Wakefield) who said that the MMR vaccine caused Autism was paid £400,000 to do so by a group of lawyers looking to sue the manufacturers.
2. If you rub a grasshopper's hind leg for five seconds every minute for four hours, it will trigger its brain to transform, swarm, and become a locust.
3. John Cazale (Fredo Corleone from "The Godfather") appeared in only five films during his lifetime. All five were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Three of them won.
4. Government vehicles in Cuba are legally required to pick up any hitchhikers.
5. Historically, milk is added before the tea and it was a sign of wealth when someone added their milk afterward, as pouring tea with low-quality porcelain would break the cup.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Closet woman
A man in Japan noticed his food going missing. So he set up a webcam and found that a woman had been living in his closet for a year.
7. In 2000, the KKK adopted a stretch of highway near St Louis. The Missouri government responded by renaming the road the "Rosa Parks Highway."
8. In 1982, drug dealers in California tried to synthesize heroine more cheaply, and accidentally created a substance that gave users late-stage Parkinson's disease in a matter of days.
9. Frank Sinatra helped as a liaison between the leader of Chicago's mafia and the Kennedy family during the '60 primary, in order to get Union backing. When Kennedy reneged on his promises after being elected, Sinatra was punished by having to play 8 straight nights at the crime bosses’ club.
10. Before Neil deGrasse Tyson went on The Daily Show, he paid attention to how many sentences Jon Stewart usually allowed before interrupting. He picked up on the kind of phrases Stewart liked to pick up on, which is why he described astronomy using sexually suggestive language.
11Al "Scarface" Capone
Al "Scarface" Capone got his infamous scars when he told a woman "You got a nice a*s" in front of her brother while working at a bar.
12. A Chernobyl fireman who claimed they didn't know that the Chernobyl meltdown flames were radioactive, 20 years later said "Of course we knew! If we had followed regulations, we would never have gone near the reactor. It was a moral obligation, our duty. We were like kamikaze."
13. There is a metal band called Hatebeak whose lead singer is an African grey parrot.
14. Hollywood comedy My Cousin Vinny is often praised by lawyers due to its accurate depiction of courtroom procedure, something very rare in films which portray trials. It is even used as a textbook example by law professors to demonstrate voir dire and cross-examination.
15. The word "Oxymoron" is actually an oxymoron, "oxy" meaning sharp and "moron" meaning dull.
16Queen's birthday
The British king or queen has two birthdays: their real birth date and one assigned to them during the summer, to ensure better weather for the parade.
17. Irish brewer Arthur Guinness was an exceptional individual who used the money he made from brewing to help relief of the poor, abolish dueling, promote literacy, and provided his workers with a higher standard of living.
18. Fox News threatened to sue the Simpsons in order to stop them from parodying its famously anti-democratic party agenda.
19. Clint Eastwood "wore the same poncho, without ever having washed it, in all three of his 'Man with No Name' Westerns."
20. North Korea used to buy full-page ads in the New York Times and other popular newspapers of the West. At least 100 such ads were published from 1969-1997.
21Ronald Dahl
Children's author Roald Dahl was given a 'Viking funeral' and buried with wine, snooker cues, pencils, and a power saw.
22. In London, there is a library (Human library) where you can check-out humans as a living book and listen to their stories.
23. In 2005, a Japanese man named Tatsuya Sakai won a world pistol shooting championship even though he practiced only with Airsoft and hadn't even held a real gun until a month before the competition.
24. Clint Eastwood bought David Webb Peoples' script for The Unforgiven in 1976 and sat on it for 15 years until he was old enough to play the lead role of William Munny.
25. The pilot script for "Scrubs" called for a "John McGinley type" for the part of Dr. Cox. He still had to audition five times to get that role.
