1Ham the Chimp
About 50 years ago, Ham the Chimp was launched into space, where he experienced up to 14.7g during a 6-minute free-fall. He survived his ocean splashdown (although he nearly drowned before rescue crews arrived) and lived 20 more years at a zoo in Washington D.C.
2. Bakersfield and Fresno were built on top of a former lake, Lake Tulare which was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. It was drained for agriculture after the Civil War and was completely gone by World War 1.
3. In Scandinavia, the Kiruna to Narvik electrified railway carries iron ore down a steeply graded route. On the way down the trains generate large amounts of electricity by regenerative braking, which is sufficient to power the empty trains back up the track and pump excess energy into the grid.
4. Muhammad Ali went to Iraq in 1990 against the then-President George H.W. Bush’s wishes to secure the release of 15 American citizens held hostage in Iraqi prisons, and brought them home.
5. Full House and Friends were shot on the exact same stage. When Full house wrapped production it was almost immediately redesigned for Friends.
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6Air Force Business Hours
When a plane was hijacked over Switzerland in 2014, the neighboring countries of Italy and France had to send their own fighter jets to the scene because the incident happened outside of the Swiss Air Force’s business hours, and even hijackings weren’t important enough to pay for overtime.
7. A legend goes that during the Thirty Years’ War, a Catholic army wanted to destroy Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany for resisting the Count of Tilly. Tilly declared that if anyone could drink 3.25 liters of wine in one go, he would spare the town. The local mayor saved the town that day.
8. When a male fruit fly is sexually rejected by a female fruit fly, it will seek out more alcohol than those that have successfully mated.
9. The first Soviet citizen to visit the White House was Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a female World War 2 sniper who had 309 confirmed kills, one of which was a sniper she dueled for 3 days.
10. Energy consumption in the United Kingdom has remained the same as in the 1970s, due to more efficient appliances and domestic solar technology.
11Rainbow Colors
The reason the rainbow has indigo/violet and not just purple is because Isaac Newton was obsessed with the number 7 for occult reasons. He had to have 7 colors.
12. There are no commercial king crab farming operations because, in part, these crabs go through a violently cannibalistic adolescence and have to be housed individually to survive it, which is too expensive large scale.
13. In order for the British Army to legally exist, the British Parliament must pass an act every 5 years. This stems from the Bill of Rights 1689, which forbade a standing army in time of peace without Parliamentary approval.
14. Graça Machel was married to the President of Mozambique until he died in a plane crash. She later married Nelson Mandela while he was President of South Africa. She is the only person in modern history to be the First Lady of two different countries.
15. Marco Polo became Kublai Khan’s diplomat at the age of 21. One of his journeys included a 2-year voyage from China to the Persian Gulf where of 600 men, only 18 survived. Altogether, throughout his life, he traveled almost 15,000 miles or 24,000 km.
16Acclimatization Societies
Acclimatization Societies were voluntary associations in the 19th and 20th centuries who purposely introduced exotic species to new places. They are responsible for massive ecological disasters.
17. Baseball player Lenny Dykstra’s Reputation is so bad that it is legally impossible to libel him.
18. The Ford Model T, of which Henry Ford famously said “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black,” was not painted black because it was cheaper, but because black paint dried quicker, speeding up the manufacturing process.
19. One study has found that job seekers are more likely to be hired if they wear glasses to their interview. Several studies have shown that people who wear glasses are typically perceived as more intelligent, more competent, and more industrious than those without spectacles.
20. Prior to making the movie Clerks, Kevin Smith would see how many credit cards he could be approved for, competing for the most active cards against his friends. Those credit cards stayed mostly unused until production of Clerks had begun, and would end up being maxed out for the production.
21Black Plague Weapon
During the final months of World War 2, Japan planned to use the Black Plague as a biological weapon against San Diego, California. The attack was scheduled for September 22, 1945, but Japan surrendered just five weeks before it could happen.
22. The Brothers Grimm, being from a lower class were excluded from university admission and tuition aid due to being poor. After they published their 1st volume of 86 folk tales, they received honorary doctorate degrees from the Universities in Berlin, Marburg, and Wrocław.
23. Our solar system is the only one appropriately called a solar system because it is centered around Sol. The general name is a planetary system.
24. Mikhail Devyataev was a Soviet fighter pilot who in February 1945 escaped a Nazi concentration camp near Peenemünde with 9 other POWs by taking over the commandant's Heinkel He 111 bomber. The NKVD (Soviet Federal agency) didn’t believe his story and classified him as a criminal, but in 1957 he became a Hero of the Soviet Union.
25. Scientists estimate that around 2.5 billion T. Rex lived over the species’ approximately 127,000 generations. At any given time, around 20,000 individuals walked the earth.
