26Huskies
Most huskies in the US are descended from the sled dog team that completed the most grueling part of the 1925 Great Race of Mercy. They saved many children's lives by transporting diphtheria antitoxin when no one else could. Afterward, the team was sold to a kennel in Poland Spring, Maine.
27. Union artillery officer Alonzo Cushing was killed after being wounded twice during the Battle of Gettysburg, refusing evacuation from his position atop Cemetery Ridge during Pickett’s Charge. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor 151 years later, the longest wait for any recipient.
28. In the months after the 2011 quake in northeastern Japan, taxi drivers reported picking up “ghosts” in the coastal town of Ishinomaki where nearly 6,000 people died in the tsunami.
29. In 1914, a 9-year-old Irish boy wrote to the British army, requesting to be sent to the front because he was good at riding his bicycle and because he would often win fights with lads twice as big.
30. Signalman 1st Class Douglas Munro is the only Coast Guard Medal of Honor Recipient and helped save 500 Marines at Guadalcanal. He died while getting the last Marines out. His last words were “Did they get off?” referring to the last of the Marines.
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31Ann Druyan
Ann Druyan, a member of the team that assembled the Golden Record for the Voyager, recorded her brainwaves to put on it. A few days before, she and Carl Sagan professed their love to each other. So somewhere in space is a golden disc with the recorded brainwaves of someone madly in love.
32. Julia Tuttle was the only woman to found a major American city, having owned and developed the land that would eventually become Miami.
33. The Great Dismal Swamp (at the border of North Carolina and Virginia) held the largest "Maroon" colony (escaped slaves and their descendants) in the United States. Most managed to stay hidden despite militia invasions that aimed to capture them, and only left the swamp after the civil war.
34. Lethal White syndrome is an autosomal genetic disorder that is most common in horse breed of American Paint Horses where foals are born all white with blue eyes and appear to be normal but internally they have a non-functioning colon which results in a very painful death after only a few days.
35. During the Great Depression, W.K. Kellogg structured his cereal plant to work four six-hour shifts instead of three eight-hour shifts, providing employment for more people.
36Menards
Because The Home Depot and Lowe’s are so large, the third largest home improvement store in the US is a regional chain called Menards with just over 300 locations.
37. Integrity Idol is a competition held in a few developing countries to find the most honest government officials. It aims to highlight honest officials and inspire a new generation to be more effective public servants.
38. In 1940, French soldiers in Lille held off a German force 5 times their size, allowing 100,000 more Allied troops to evacuate at Dunkirk and prompting the German general to grant them an Honours of War ceremony after the surrender.
39. The word emoji comes from Japanese e (絵, "picture") + moji (文字, "character"). The resemblance to the English words emotion and emoticon are purely coincidental.
40. "Going troppo" is an Australian term for being driven mad by heat, as a result of spending too much time in the tropics. A study in Darwin found those who do not work in air-conditioning had higher levels of negativity, anxiety, aggression, and alcohol use, and lower levels of general health.
