1Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant created the Department of Justice, ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, and asked for Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1871, enabling him to combat and prosecute the Ku Klux Klan.
2. “Operation Rock Wallaby” was a helicopter mission which dumped thousands of pounds of veggies (mostly carrots and sweet potatoes) to wallabies and other animals that were left without a food source after surviving the 2020 bushfires in New South Wales.
3. Hans Schmidt is the only Catholic priest to have ever been executed in the US. He killed his pregnant mistress, drank her blood, and dismembered her. He was found guilty for the crime and was executed via electric chair in February 1916.
4. Angela Lansbury (Mrs. Potts) from Beauty and the Beast (1991) sang “Tale as old as time” in a single take after being initially against it because she thought her “aging singing voice” wasn’t suited for the song.
5. In 2009, a Vietnamese man was hospitalized unconscious from consuming too much methanol alcohol. Doctors decided to transfuse 15 cans of beer about 1 per hour into his body to revive him. The liver breaks down ethanol before methanol which gave doctors enough time to do dialysis and remove the alcohol from his system.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Donald Duck
Donald Duck is an extremely popular pop-icon in Germany, where you can buy his comics at most newsstands. In their version, Donald uses a highly sophisticated level of language, and "many Germans credit him with having initiated them into the language of the literary classics."
7. A 1982 FIFA World Cup football match played between West Germany and Austria was so bad that it was termed as “Disgrace of Gijón.” The German TV Commentator refused to comment on the game at one point, the Austrian TV commentator asked people to change the channel, and Spain's newspaper printed the match in their Crimes Section.
8. The Concorde airplane flew so fast that if you left London (or Paris) in the evening flying west towards New York, to the passengers in the plane, the sun would actually appear to begin rising again shortly after reaching cruising speed. The plane flew faster than the Earth’s rotation.
9. There is a diamond mine in Arkansas that is open to the public. Visitors can keep whatever Gems they find. Till now thousands of diamonds have been found since it opened.
10. The domain name ".tv" is actually the country code domain for Tuvalu, a country in Polynesia. Due to its popularity from its similarity to 'television', the Tuvalu government sought to capitalize on it and nearly 10% of its revenue come from royalties from .tv addresses.
11Victor Vescovo
American naval officer Victor Vescovo has reached the deepest parts of all five of the earth's oceans. He has also climbed the highest peaks on all seven continents.
12. John Carmack (founder of "id Software" known for his work in the development of Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein) was arrested at the age of 14 for helping a group of children steal Apple II computers using a mixture of thermite and Vaseline to melt the windows to break into the building.
13. In 1958, a technician named Cecil Kelley was working on a plutonium compound that went supercritical, giving him a lethal dose in just 200 microseconds. His colleagues found him outside in the snow screaming “I’m burning up! I’m burning up!”
14. Marlon Brando tried to purchase the rights to a movie about the Iran-Contra scandal using a former CIA connection. The CIA was able to derail this by creating a front company to outbid Brando for the rights. The man they put in charge of this operation was none other than Colonel Oliver North.
15. David Edmondson lied on his resume to get a position as a Vice President of Marketing at RadioShack in 1990s. He worked his way up over 11 years to become the CEO and resigned in disgrace after it was revealed that his resume was falsified.
16Ancient Romans
When Ancient Romans had something stolen from them, they would "transfer" ownership of their stolen items to a deity, so as to make the god responsible for punishing the thief.
17. A Plaque in Plainfield, Indiana marks the spot where a Carriage Driver intentionally drove through a huge mudhole to fling ex-President Martin Van Buren out of the carriage and into the mud. Van Buren had opposed a bill that would have funded improvements to the National Road.
18. A woman in Utah kept her dead husband in a freezer for 10 years so she could collect his veteran's benefits. He left a notarized note saying she hadn't killed him.
19. The "Herbivore Men" of Japan are the men who have basically given up on marriage and love. They often can’t afford it, and they don’t want to work to death to raise a family, instead they have hobbies or anime or the internet to fill up their time.
20. The Seinfeld episode “The Pen”, in which Jerry and Elaine visit his parents in Florida, is the only episode that doesn’t feature Jason Alexander. After the table read, he threatened to quit the show if they ever wrote another episode without George in it again.
21Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel is both a bridge and a tunnel. Considered one of the 7 wonders of modern engineering, it was completed in 1964 and is 23 miles long.
22. In the Wild West, it was most common for 6-shot revolvers to only be loaded with 5 rounds. A live bullet in the chamber below the hammer of a 19th-century single-action revolver can be set off with a sharp knock, hence it was not desirable to carry one fully loaded. This was known as the ‘Cowboy Load.’
23. Actors in the early silent film era often went uncredited because audiences just didn’t care. Then, in 1910, actress Mary Pickford became so popular cinemas started specially advertising her films, making her the world’s first movie star.
24. In the 1860s, an atheist tobacconist named George Hull created a 10-foot stone statue (Cardiff Giant), buried it, then exhumed it a year later as proof of giants, all to mock a bible verse that states giants once lived on the Earth.
25. Abraham Lincoln wrote poems throughout his life, including this one at the age of 17: Abraham Lincoln is my nam[e], And with my pen I wrote the same, I wrote in both hast and speed and left it here for fools to read.
