26BBC
In 1942 BBC issued an appeal for postcards and photographs of the coast of Europe from Norway to the Pyrenees. It was actually an intelligence-gathering exercise. They were sent to the War Office to help determine a suitable location (Normandy) for the eventual D-Day landings of 1944.
27. A man named Robert Shields wrote the longest diary in history - 37.5 million words written over a 25 year period until he was disabled by a stroke. He spent hours every day chronically the most minute details of his daily life and even limited sleep to 2 hours at a time to record his dreams.
28. Albert Einstein never received a Nobel Prize for relativity and he did not attend his prize giving, despite being informed that he was about to receive the prize. He chose to continue with a lecture tour of Japan because he simply no longer valued it.
29. James Avery (Uncle Phil) served in the US Navy in Vietnam from 1968-69. He then moved to San Diego to write poetry and TV scripts for PBS and won an Emmy for his effort. He got a scholarship from UC San Diego and graduated there with a Bachelor’s degree in Drama and Literature in 1976.
30. When Batman TV show of the 60s was canceled by ABC after 3 seasons, it was on the verge of being rescued by NBC for a fourth season but it was discovered that the sets of the TV show were already destroyed. NBC rescinded the offer not wanting to spend hundreds of thousands building the set.
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31Quarantine
The word quarantine comes from an Italian variant 'Quaranta giorni', meaning 40 days, the period that all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague.
