1Elan School
Elan School was a child behavior modification camp in Poland which operated between 1970 and 2011. Using Lord of The Flies style techniques, they would psychologically destroy the children for years, leading to extraordinarily high suicide rates. If a child escaped, bounty hunters would chase them across the country.
2. Elephants stay cancer-free as they have 20 copies of a key tumor-fighting gene. Humans have just one.
3. The big orange fuel tank attached to the space shuttles was originally white, but they stopped painting it to save 600lbs.
4. The 2nd wealthiest former NBA player behind Michael Jordan is Junior Bridgeman who has a net worth of over $600 million (as of September 2021). He worked at Wendy’s in the off-season to learn the business, eventually owning over 100 franchises and a Coke bottling plant.
5. Words that share a semantic relationship and are grouped in a specific order are called Irreversible Binomials/Trinomials. This can include things like “mac & cheese”, “spick and span”, and “lock, stock, and barrel.”
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Joaquín García
A Spanish civil servant named Joaquín García didn't show up to work for 6 years (possibly as many as 14), and this was only discovered when someone tried to give him an award for long service.
7. The chemical reaction in glow sticks was discovered by Dr. Edwin Chandross in 1962, but he had no idea that the “chemiluminescent” objects were popular at music shows until a Vice interview in 2013. “Is that so?” he said. “Maybe my granddaughter will think I’m cool now.”
8. Karl Dönitz became the führer after Hitler’s suicide and his cabinet continued to have daily 10 am meetings for about a month even though they had no power. They discussed how Germany should proceed after the war, despite the Allies showing absolutely no interest in adopting their plans.
9. The town of Why, Arizona was originally known as just “Y” due to the Y-shaped intersection of two roads. It changed its name to “Why” due to an Arizona state law requiring town names to be at least 3 letters long.
10. Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) was a computer magazine columnist in the 90s and his column became known for randomly referencing Uma Thurman and pranking readers. He is also credited with debunking a 90s era conspiracy theory that suggested Microsoft’s Wingdings font contained secret messages.
11Frank W. Abagnale Jr.
Nearly every claim by American Columnist Frank W. Abagnale Jr. in “Catch Me if you Can” has been debunked.
12. American baseball player Rube Waddell (1876-1914) was so fond of puppies that fans of the opposing team would bring their dogs to games and hold them up. Waddell would run over to play with them instead of focusing on the game.
13. A tabby is any domestic cat with a distinctive ‘M’ shaped marking on its forehead. “Tabby” is not a breed of cat but a coat type seen in almost all genetic lines of domestic cats. Tabby originally referred to “striped silk taffeta” from the French word tabis, meaning “a rich watered silk.”
14. In 2013, a woman was murdered in a hotel room by her husband while her 9-year-old daughter tried to call 911 four times. The calls did not go through because the hotel phones required all calls to start with 9 (making 911 9911). Kari’s Law was then passed which removed the need for the 9 in hotel phones.
15. The modern air conditioner was invented by Willis Carrier not to cool people, but to reduce damaging humidity in a print shop.
16The Wizarding World
Walt Disney Imagineering developed plans to build a “tiny” Harry Potter ride similar to Buzz Lightyear, with a wand instead of a gun. J.K. Rowling, unimpressed, turned to Universal Studios, who “seemed to understand the size and scope needed” and created ‘The Wizarding World.’
17. Rolling Stones’ bassist Bill Wyman began dating his 2nd wife, Mandy Smith when she was 13 and he was 47. Married for 2 years, they divorced in 1993. That same year Wyman's 30-year-old son from his first marriage married Smith’s mother, who was then aged 46.
18. Adolf Hitler once befriended a Jew, Rosa Bernile Nienau, which only ended when top Nazi officials interfered five years later.
19. In response to the film “Apollo 18”, NASA engineer John Schuessler clarified that moon landings ended with Apollo 17 because NASA simply did not have the time or funds to fit in more moon landings after 1972. He also sees no evidence of extraterrestrial life on the Moon.
20. King Gillette, the inventor of the safety razor, was a socialist who wrote a book describing his vision of the U.S. population living in a single utopian metropolis/building powered by Niagara Falls. Only 1 in 7 people would need to work, and it would be free of money and thus free of crime.
21Beverly Hills, 90210
One episode of “Beverly Hills, 90210” upset many parents because a teen character “suffered no consequences and showed no remorse” for losing her virginity, prompting the network to “punish” the characters via a pregnancy scare.
22. In order to aid recruitment during World War 1, the British allowed men from the same town to serve together in “pals battalions.” This was stopped after the Battle of the Somme, in which casualties were so high amongst some units that almost the entire male population of some towns were wiped out.
23. Dr. John Kellogg who ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium starting in 1876 believed that most ailments resulted from unclean bowels full of toxins from undigested food. To that end, he administered enemas with a device capable of running fifteen gallons of water through a patient’s bowel in seconds.
24. Scientists for centuries believed rogue waves were a myth, despite eyewitness accounts from returning mariners. The first real measurement only occurred on January 1, 1995, where it was recorded on an oil-drilling platform off the coast of Norway.
25. Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, who once ran a small liquor store in Orange County, California for years, had once been the most powerful man in South Vietnam, serving as a general, vice president, and prime minister.
