1U.S. Navy Phantom II
NASA pilots routinely intercepted and defeated U.S. Navy Phantom IIs in mock dogfights, until complaints from the Navy put an end to the harassment.
2. When Luxembourg was liberated from Nazism in 1944, the returning government was so impressed with some regulations and laws concerning tax and employment the Nazis had made, that it decided to simply keep them.
3. The Forbidden City, built in 1420 in China, was so well-designed that it withstood over 200 earthquakes and can withstand one with a of magnitude 10.1 on the Richter scale.
4. In 2014, a family in Missouri had to leave their $450,000 home after it was infested with 4,500 - 6,000 brown recluse spiders and exterminators were unable to get rid of them.
5. John Harrison is the only person to be both the child (William Henry Harrison) and the parent (Benjamin Harrison) of U.S. Presidents.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Banner blindness
Banner blindness is a phenomenon where web users sub consciously ignore information on web pages from ad-like banners.
7. Deborah Sampson who disguised herself as a man to fight in the U.S. Revolutionary War served in an elite Light Infantry unit and was wounded in battle. After her secret was discovered, she was honorably discharged but had to fight to receive her veteran's pension.
8. Simon Cowell praised Rebecca Black's song "Friday": "the fact that it's making people so angry is brilliant". He advised her to not "listen to anyone over the age of 18. I'm being deadly serious. Whatever she's done has worked ... she's the most talked-about artist in America right now".
9. Moths make up a large portion of Yellowstone bears' diets, and they can eat up to 20,000 calories worth of moths in a day.
10. The Ottoman Empire's Sultan Ibrahim I had 280 of his concubines drowned in the ocean after one of them slept with another man.
11Anne Frank
Anne Frank only assumed that her father was killed in the concentration camps and that a childhood friend of hers stated that if she knew he was still alive she believed Anne would have summoned the courage to survive.
12. Search and rescue dogs searching for survivors after 9/11 would experience depression-like symptoms because they couldn't find survivors, only bodies.
13. During O.J. Simpson's 1995 verdict announcement for murder, long-distance calls declined by 58%, trading on the New York Stock Exchange decreased by 41%, water usage decreased, and there was an estimated $480 million in lost productivity due to work stopping.
14. Planktons perform 45% of Earth's photosynthesis, yet constitute less than 1% of its total plant mass.
15. Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, once voiced Barney Rubble from the Flintstones while he was in the full-body cast as he laid flat on his back with the other Flintstones co-stars gathered around him after a car crash.
16If I Did It
The Goldman family was given legal ownership of OJ Simpson's canceled book "If I Did It." They republished with a new cover hiding the word "If" so the title appeared to be "I Did It."
17. The CEO of Spotify (Daniel Ek) was the CEO of uTorrent in 2006.
18. Recently, a group of parents among a subset of the anti-vaxxer community are actively trying to cure their children's autism with daily bleach enemas.
19. Bob Marley's song, Buffalo Soldier, refers to the name given to black troops by Native Americans, who thought black soldiers' hair looked and felt like a buffalo's pelt. Buffalo Soldiers settled railroad disputes, built and repaired forts, and protected settlers from Native American attacks.
20. The kiln was originally pronounced with a silent "n." Linguists believe that when written descriptions of kilns reached people who had never heard of them before; they assumed the "n" was pronounced, and this mispronunciation took over.
21Brontosaurus
The Brontosaurus once was considered to have never existed but has recently been declared to have actually existed. It was thought to have been in the same genus as the Apatosaurus but recent discoveries have separated the two as distinct.
22. Despite receiving an annual rainfall of just 3 inches, Yuma, Arizona produces 90% of the United States' lettuce during the winter.
23. In 2006, skydiver Michael Holmes jumped out of a plane at 15,000 feet wearing a helmet camera. His first parachute failed, then his reserve failed too. Then he waved goodbye before landing in a blackberry bush and surviving.
24. A Mexican diplomat named Gilberto Bosques Saldivar rescued 40,000 people, mainly Spaniards and Jews, who wanted to flee Nazi occupied France during World War 2. His heroism remained unknown to the world at large for some 60 years.
25. Director James Cameron reached the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench in 2012. He is the first person to accomplish the trip solo. The data he collected resulted in interesting new finds in the field of marine biology, including new species of sea cucumber and squid worm.
