1Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a challenge to write the worst opening paragraph to a novel possible. It is named after the author of the 1830 novel Paul Clifford, which began with “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents.”
2. Stalin struggled with depression and summoned renowned Russian psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev to examine him. After the examination, Bekhterev said only one word, “paranoiac.” He died on the very next day from what most believed was poisoning.
3. James Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, developed a new proof for the Pythagorean Theorem while discussing math with some members of Congress. His proof was published in a peer-reviewed journal.
4. Bruce Springsteen’s mother would rent him guitars for $6 a week in 1957. Springsteen bought his first guitar as a teenager in 1964 for $18.95. Later on, his mother would take out a loan to buy him a $60 Kent guitar.
5. Kamikaze pilots weren’t 100% volunteers. Pilots were asked to put their hand up in a big group if they didn’t want to volunteer. Amid peer pressure, hardly anyone was able to say no to the mission.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Filipino Churches
Filipino churches built during Spain’s colonial period used millions of egg whites in the concrete to make it more durable. This is also why Filipino desserts often use lots of egg yolks. Many of these desserts were developed to use up all the extra yolks from construction projects.
7. David Vogel, the then-president of production at Disney, was fired from his position for buying the rights to the script for Sixth Sense for $3 million because he bought it without permission.
8. Hospitals throughout New York City area were bracing for maximum capacity on 9/11, only to slowly realize that there were very few survivors from the World Trade Center’s collapse.
9. While alcohol made from apples is called cider, alcohol made from pears is called “Perry.”
10. A group of engineering students from Purdue University reported that its licking machine, modeled after a human tongue, took an average of 364 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.
11FTC Password Recommendation
The FTC actually recommends against organizations using regular password changing policies as it only encourages users to use simple, easy-to-remember passwords that they then only alter in predictable ways.
12. Before 9/11, FAA regulations allowed small knives to be carried aboard aircraft by passengers. So even if screeners had found the hijackers’ knives they would have still been allowed to board Flights 11, 77, 175, and 93 with them.
13. In 2011, two fishermen from Kiribati went adrift for 33 days before landing in the Marshall Islands. They then found out that their hitherto thought to be dead uncle, who went missing 25 years earlier after also going adrift, had landed in the Marshall Islands as well and married there.
14. Vince Gilligan strongly regretted introducing the machine gun to Breaking Bad’s last season and found writing a convincing explanation for it so difficult that he nearly abandoned the plot device out of frustration.
15. It only takes the average person 10-20 minutes to fall asleep.
16Alligator Hatchlings
The sex of alligator hatchlings is based purely on temperature while incubating. At 86F or lower, the babies will all be female and at 93F or higher, they will all be male. The mother can sense these changes in temperature and will alter the nest to maintain an optimum temperature.
17. Screensavers were originally created to save CRT screens from burning an image into the display due to prolonged, unchanged use.
18. Brazilian butt lifts have a higher mortality rate than any other type of cosmetic surgery. Recovery from the procedure takes 10 to 14 days and patients can’t lie down on their backs or sit on their behinds for around 3 weeks.
19. A New Jersey history professor was once telling a story to his class about how a ranger saved his life in a canyon at night in Texas in 1940. The ranger had managed to track him down and coincidentally walked into the classroom right as the professor was telling the story.
20. There is a separate (FIA unofficial) land speed record for women, and the women’s record was broken by Jessi Combs (MythBusters) in 2019 during her fatal +522mph run.
21Akron Serial Pooper
Residents of Akron, Ohio have been terrorized by an unknown person who has been pooping on their cars for nearly 10 years.
22. Don Cheadle was uncredited for his major role in Ocean's Eleven due to him being denied top billing, alongside other cast members, so he refused to be credited at all.
23. Spirit Halloween, which is owned by Spencer’s, runs over 1200 locations each year for 4-8 weeks during the Halloween season. They spend the rest of the year scouting empty locations for the next Halloween season.
24. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos was once the most widely watched series in American public television and is still the most widely watched PBS series in the world.
25. Nikolai Vavilov was a Soviet botanist whose aim was to end hunger worldwide. He collected seeds of wild crops and deposited them in a seed bank to produce new strains of crops. Stalin denounced him and used him as a scapegoat for a famine. He died in prison from starvation.
