1Tong Aonan
In 2016, a 27-year-old Chinese man named Tong Aonan declared his affection for his next-door neighbor by solving 840 Rubik’s cubes and using them to create a portrait of her. She said no.
2. Author Lee Child was inspired to name his character Jack Reacher after a shopping trip. An old lady asked for his help in reaching for a can of pears. Child’s wife, when seeing this, commented that if his writing career didn’t work out, he could ‘always get a job as a reacher.’
3. Antoine Walker had earned $108 million throughout his NBA career and filed for bankruptcy in 2010, just two years after his retirement.
4. Ancient Romans had a type of warranty on purchased slaves, i.e., if a slave committed suicide within 6 months after purchase, then the owner had the right to claim a full refund from the previous owner.
5. Two-thirds of Argentina’s population is of Italian heritage. They fled there for economic opportunities and to escape devastating wars. It is the only other country besides Italy with an Italian heritage majority population.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Nicholas Alkemade
In 1944, a 21-year-old tail gunner named Nicholas Alkemade of Lancaster Bomber jumped from his aircraft after being shot down over Germany. He fell 18,000 feet without a parachute and survived with a sprained leg as his only injury.
7. About 3 days before D-Day, a 21-year-old Irish woman named Maureen Flavin took her hourly barometer reading and sent it to Dublin. She had no idea that this single data point would be sent directly to Eisenhower and averted disaster by delaying D-Day due to an incoming storm.
8. Brian Jacques, the author of the Redwall Series, was originally a milkman that volunteered to read to blind students along his route. Dissatisfied with the selection of children’s books available, he decided to write his own and became a best-selling author.
9. In 2007, Warren Buffett bet a hedge-fund manager that the S&P 500 would beat a portfolio of hedge funds. After 10 years, the S&P had returned 85% and the hedge funds just 22%.
10. Before the 12th Amendment, the Vice President was the Presidential candidate who won the second most votes, instead of a running mate.
11George Carlin
On July 21, 1972, George Carlin was arrested and charged with violating obscenity laws after performing his famous “Seven Dirty Words” routine at Milwaukee’s Summerfest. He would go on to be arrested a total of seven times for reciting that same routine.
12. In 1924, a tunnel network was discovered underneath Washington D.C. Speculation behind the network’s origins included a Confederate hideout or a liquor depot for bootleggers. They ended discovering that it was actually dug by the Smithsonian Institute's entomologist Harrison G. Dyar, who ‘did it for exercise.’
13. A town in Spain named Trasmoz was excommunicated for witchcraft in the 13th century, with Pope Julius II also cursing the village in 1511. Neither the ex-communication nor the curse has ever been lifted. Every June, during the Feria de Brujeria festival that the town celebrates, one person is named as ‘Witch of the Year.’
14. Because pendulum clocks are unreliable at sea, the first attempt at a marine chronometer was undertaken in 1673 utilizing a balance wheel and spring for regulation instead of a pendulum. This opened the way for the first modern pocket watches and wristwatches.
15. After the civil war, the pumpkin pie was resisted in southern states as a symbol of Yankee culture imposed on the south, where there was no tradition of eating pumpkin pie.
16Amaro Pargo
In order to promote Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, Ubisoft funded the exhumation, DNA testing, and facial reconstruction of famous 18th-century pirate Amaro Pargo.
17. The US Government passed the Stolen Valor Act in 2005. The Act made it illegal to wear or falsely claim to have received any military medal or decoration without authorization, including the Medal of Honor. However, the Act was later ruled unconstitutional by the Ninth Circuit Court.
18. Cain’s Jawbone by Edward Powys Mathers is a 1934 mystery novel printed with its 100 pages out of order. To solve the puzzle, readers must determine the correct page order as well as the names of both the six murderers and six victims. The mystery has only ever been solved by three people.
19. When Niccolo Tartaglia found a formula to solve certain types of cubic equations, he did not publish his findings. However, Tartaglia wrote a 25 line poem explaining the formula and shared it with another mathematician, Girolama Cardano, who went ahead and published it himself.
20. Joaquin Phoenix’s older brother, River Phoenix, who starred as a kid in Stand By Me among other movies, died of an overdose while attending a concert with Joaquin on Halloween in Los Angeles at the age of 23 in 1993.
21Death Cleaning
‘Death cleaning’ is an exercise unique to Sweden where elderly people deliberately clear out and declutter their possessions so that nobody else has to do it once they’re dead.
22. The Danish language has about 40 different vowel sounds and it is so hard to learn that Danish children on average know 30% fewer words at 15 months than Norwegian children and take two years longer to learn the past tense.
23. Richard Scrushy who was charged with masterminding a $2.7 billion fraud case, came up with a novel strategy: “[play] the religion card” and become a televangelist to curry favor with jurors (the trial was held in Alabama). He was acquitted of all charges.
24. The original John Hughes cut of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” ran 3.5 hours because there was so much improv between Steve Martin and John Candy, and that cut is probably lost forever.
25. Henneguya salminicola is the first and thus far the only known multicellular animal that doesn't seem to use oxygen to breathe. It is an 8-millimeter white parasite that infects the flesh of Chinook salmon.
