1Sisamnes
Sisamnes was a corrupt judge in the Persian Empire. In 525 B.C., after accepting a bribe, the king had him arrested and skinned alive. His skin was then used to cover the seat from which judgments were made. His own son ‘Otanes’ then replaced him as a judge.
2. A camel named Douglas was killed by a Union sharpshooter at the Siege of Vicksburg. A team of six Confederate snipers was assembled and tasked with avenging his death.
3. Conservationists created a match.com profile for the world’s loneliest frog named Romeo, in order to raise funds for expeditions to find more of his species. Their work paid off, and Romeo and Juliet are together at last.
4. WWII Submarine Captain John Philip Cromwell stoically went down with his stricken sub Sculpin rather than allow himself to be captured by the Japanese. Cpt. Cromwell had knowledge of top-secret highly sensitive Allied war plans that the enemy may have extracted from him through drugs or torture.
5. US Supreme Court has concluded that US citizens have the right to refuse Presidential Pardons. George Wilson fought a presidential pardon and won a hanging. He was convicted of robbing the US Mail in Pennsylvania and sentenced to death.
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6Victor Vescovo
When Victor Vescovo reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest trench in the world (at 10,928 meters or 35,849 feet), he was shocked to discover a plastic bag and candy wrappers, thereby confirming that human-generated waste can pollute even the deepest parts of the ocean.
7. Dinosaurs didn’t evolve into birds. Birds are dinosaurs. Specifically, they are Theropods in the subgroup Coelurosauria in the clade Maniraptora. In fact, there are still far more species of dinosaurs (minimally 10,000) on the planet than there are mammals (around 5400).
8. Starving female praying mantises lure males into sex, and then eat them instead. The study shows that male mantises were more likely to seek out starving females than healthy females, due to the increased pheromones they purposefully secrete.
9. 70,000 years ago, a nomadic star came within 1 light-year of the Sun. Research suggests this close pass by Scholz’s star sent dozens of comets and asteroids tumbling out of the solar system.
10. During the hyperinflation of the 1920s in Germany, waiters in restaurants would stand up on a table every 30 minutes to call out the new prices.
11Lost at Sea
In 2011, two men got lost at sea and were adrift for 33 days before washing up on an atoll, where they met a descendant of a long-lost uncle. Their uncle had also gone adrift 50 years earlier.
12. The owner of a brand name can lose their legal protection for it if people started using it as the common or generic name for a type of product or service. This is what happened to Cellophane, Escalator, Flip Phone, Frisbee, Hovercraft, Kerosene, Sellotape, Trampoline, and Videotape. This is why Adobe really doesn’t want you using “photoshop” as a verb. This also nearly happened to Nintendo, which is why Nintendo promoted the use of the term “games console” so people would stop calling consoles produced by other manufacturers “Nintendos.”
13. Brought up in a wealthy home with a revolving door of governesses, Franklin D. Roosevelt (presidency 1933 - 1945) was the last U.S. president who was fluent in a language besides English. He spoke French and German.
14. For the first three years of her life, Candice Bergen had breakfast with Edgar Bergen, her famous ventriloquist father, and Charlie McCarthy, his dummy, and thought Charlie was her brother. Charlie would sit there and talk to her: ‘Drink your milk.’ Her father never spoke directly to her.
15. Norway leads the world in commercial whaling, hunting hundreds of times more than Japan per year despite its much smaller population.
16Harlon Block
Harlon Block, the marine who raised the flag at Iwo Jima, died a few days after the famous photo of the event was taken. He was misidentified for 2 years. However, his mother had immediately recognized him in it, saying “I’ve changed so many diapers on that boy’s butt, I know it’s my boy.”
17. Stalin was hit by a horse-drawn carriage twice as a child, which led to permanent damage to his left arm. This injury exempted him from fighting in World War 1 where he would have likely died.
18. Family Video is still in business because the owners were smart enough to invest in purchasing the property (which can be leased out even after DVD's were dead), instead of simply renting space as Blockbuster did.
19. “Sheep Dipping” is a practice known in intelligence circles where a member of the Army is “officially discharged from service” as part of their covert cover, while in secret, they are still eligible for rank promotions and military benefits.
20. Saudi Arabia once accidentally printed textbooks showing Yoda sitting next to the king.
21Inca Road System
The Inca Road system was at least 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) long. The roads were carefully planned and maintained. They were paved where necessary, had stairways, bridges, and constructions such as retaining walls and a drainage system. Only 25% of the system remains visible today.
22. In 1984 a group of Australian Aboriginal people living a traditional nomadic life were discovered in the Gibson Desert in Western Australia. They had been unaware of the arrival of Europeans on the continent, let alone cars or even clothes.
23. Seneca Village, a community composed mainly of free black people, was destroyed in the 1850s to make way for New York City's Central Park.
24. When his friend Hephaestion died, Alexander the Great held such an expensive funeral that it has been estimated to have cost the modern equivalent of $2 billion.
25. When the Baltimore Colts tried to move to Indianapolis, the owner feared that the government would attempt to keep the team in the city by eminent domain. He secretly packed up everything in trucks in the middle of the night and was in Indiana before the government realized they were gone.
