1Workout
A study found that after a 90-minute workout, athletes who ate organic peanut butter, Clif Shot Bloks, Cytomax powder, PowerBars, and Gatorade showed no difference in insulin, glucose, cholesterol, or triglyceride levels compared to athletes who ate hotcakes, OJ, a hash brown, a hamburger, fries, and Coke.
2. Dutch authorities created over 300 little "parks" for bees on top of bus stop shelters in Utrecht; roofs are planted with low-maintenance sedum providing a safe habitat for bees. Over 50% of Netherlands' 358 bee species are endangered. Human commuters get with bamboo benches and LED lighting.
3. The crying Indian in the Keep America Beautiful ad was really an Italian guy named Espera "Oscar" de Conti. He moved to Hollywood, changed his name to Iron Eyes Cody and had a 60-year career as an Indian. Even after being found out he still claimed to be Cherokee and Cree, not Sicilian.
4. In 1971, the original tapes for Monty Python were almost erased and destroyed by the BBC. This was intended as a cost-saving measure to reuse the tapes. Terry Gilliam bought them all and saved them.
5. In the 1980s, there was a persistent rumor in the UK that McDonald's was funding the Irish Republican Army. This was ultimately traced back to a U.S. talk show where the company was praised for its generosity in funding Individual Retirement Accounts.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Deep-dish pizza
The deep-dish pizza was invented in 1943 when someone at the small pizza shop Pizzeria Uno in Illinois decided to make a pizza using a cake mold.
7. Cats do not need to blink on a regular basis to keep their eyes lubricated. Unblinking eyes are probably an advantage when hunting. Cats will, however, squint their eyes, usually as a form of communication expressing affection and ease around another cat or human.
8. The term for the last animal of an entire species is Endling. When an endling dies, the species is considered extinct.
9. The YMCA sued the Village People over their "YMCA" song for trademark infringement, but the two sides settled out of court and the YMCA later expressed pride towards the band for their song as a salute their organization.
10. During a 2000 celebrity edition episode of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire", comedian Norm MacDonald made it to the million-dollar question but passed on it to not risk it. However, his answer was right.
11Bobby Fischer
Chess prodigy Bobby Fischer invented a chess variation which randomized the starting positions of the home row pieces to reward creativity over memorization.
12. "Baby Huey" was a 400lbs Chicago soul singer who died in 1970 at age 26 after releasing a single album. The album later became hugely influential on early hip-hop artists, eventually being sampled on hundreds of tracks over the past approximately 40 years.
13. In the 1940s hundreds of Guatemalans were infected involuntarily with syphilis by Johns Hopkins University, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and the Rockefeller Foundation. A court case is underway to this day on behalf of 444 victims resulting in 83 deaths.
14. A German soldier named Artur Fischer survived Stalingrad on the last plane out. After the war, he went on to invent many ubiquitous items such as the synchronized camera flash and the plastic wall anchor and held over 1100 patents before dying at the age of 96.
15. Japanese have been wearing surgical-style masks since 1918 and it has become a part of social etiquette. It is also worn as a fashion item and it serves as defensive barriers due to social awkwardness. Total sales of disposable face masks in Japan amounted to ¥35.8 billion in 2018.
16Mountain lions
Because mountain lions usually wander the wilderness alone, scent scraping sometimes isn’t enough to locate each other for mating. A female mountain lion will ascend to a high elevation and call to a male by caterwauling, a loud blood-curdling screeching cry that can be heard up to 5 miles away.
17. Scientists have discovered what they think is the world’s oldest biological color. It is bright pink. These pigments were discovered after researchers crushed 1.1 billion-year-old rocks in the marine shale deposit beneath the Sahara desert.
18. When the Grand Canyon divided the local squirrel population, they evolved into two different species. Despite being separated only by the Colorado River and remaining extremely similar in appearance, they are now so genetically incompatible that they can no longer interbreed.
19. Exxon used to be known as Esso, a phonetic spelling of "S.O." for Standard Oil after it was forced to break up into 34 smaller companies. It is still widely known as Esso outside the US.
20. During the 1952 polio epidemic in Denmark, mortality was over 85% due to a shortage of respirators. Dr. Bjorn Ibsen invented a new kind of ventilator, proved it worked and then recruited thousands of volunteers to hand-pump them for weeks (they were fully manual). Mortality fell to 26%.
21John Berry Meachum
A former American slave named John Berry Meachum began teaching classes for black people on a steamboat in the middle of the Mississippi River to work around the state of Missouri's prohibition of black education.
22. Young children develop "theory of mind" earlier if they know two languages, and in older people, bilingualism can postpone the onset of dementia. Researchers say the statement that learning languages make people smarter has a sound scientific basis.
23. Honey Badgers are extremely intelligent and are therefore extremely hard to keep locked up in captivity.
24. Bill Gates' idea of a splurge was a used Porsche 911 after Microsoft went public that made him worth over $350 million before the age of 30.
25. Admiral J. Stockdale was shot down in Vietnam and held prisoner for 7.5 years, 4 of them in solitary. He endured captivity by drawing inspiration from Epictetus, a stoic and former slave who shrugged off even his own state of slavery as a natural inconvenience that should not concern him.
