1NY Yankees Appearance Code
The New York Yankees have a strict appearance code that has been in place since 1976: "All players, coaches, and male executives are banned from wearing any facial hair other than mustaches, and scalp hair may not be grown below the collar." Long sideburns and muttonchops are permitted.
2. When NFL lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif received his medical degree from McGill Medical School in 2018, he attempted to have the letters "M.D." added to his nameplate, but the NFL rejected his request.
3. Over 300,000 oak trees were planted by the Swedish Navy in 1831 with the hope of using their lumber in ship construction 150 years later. Because contemporary battleships are made of metal, the Navy had little use for the trees after they learned that the trees had matured in 1975.
4. Heinz Meixner made one of the first efforts to get through the Berlin Wall in 1963. He took the windshield off a convertible and let the air out of the tires so they were as flat as possible. He concealed his future wife and her mother in the car, drove up to the boom barrier, and raced under it to freedom in West Berlin.
5. Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière was the most accomplished submarine captain in history. He only used 74 torpedoes during the course of his career, with 39 confirmed hits, yet he managed to sink 194 ships with a combined tonnage of 453,000 tons.
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6Dickens' Love for Cats
Due to Dickens's deep affection for cats, his sister-in-law turned one of his late cat Bob's paws into a letter opener to help ease the author's grief after Bob's untimely passing. This was always within Dickens' reach, and he used it first thing every morning to check his mail.
7. When someone on a NASA mission succeeds or contributes to the mission's success, they are awarded the Silver Snoopy. Charles M. Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, donated his time and art for the award since he was a huge admirer of the space program.
8. After 19 college students died playing American football in 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to ban the game. In response, 62 schools got together in New York to start what would become the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
9. During the Vietnam War, C4 was used to start fires because it burns like wood and doesn't go off unless a blasting cap is used.
10. Fifa prevented the Mexican club Atlético Celaya from recruiting female player Maribel Dominguez in 2004 on the grounds that "there must be a clear division between men's and women's football," despite the fact that no such regulation prohibits women from playing football with a men's squad.
11SmarterChild AI
The "artificial intelligence" bot SmarterChild was introduced in 2000 on AOL Instant Messenger. It was one of the first openly accessible machine learning interfaces for consumers.
12. George Washington wouldn't go more than 25 miles from Mount Vernon to attend his nephew Lawrence Augustine Washington's wedding because he wanted to spend his retirement years close to his beloved estate.
13. American abolitionist Frederick Douglass was transferred to Baltimore as a child, where he learned the English alphabet from the mistress of the house. After the mistress' husband ended their lessons, Douglass bartered bread with the starving kids in the area for lessons in reading and writing.
14. In order to keep the eyes of the deceased closed after death, funeral homes use spiked contact lenses.
15. Many comedic television series, including Community, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and many more, have included the fictitious potato chip brand Let's Potato Chips. To avoid any potential copyright issues, the prop company Independent Studio Services created Let's.
16Turkey Tails
During the 1950s, turkey tails were dumped by American poultry companies into Samoan markets. 75% of a turkey's tail is made out of fat, and the oil it uses to preen itself. It's usually paired with a cold Budweiser. Officials in Samoa stopped allowing the entry of turkey tails in 2007 after discovering a link between the meat and the country's obesity crisis.
17. When a pilot uses a Martin-Baker ejection seat to eject out of a plane, they are added to the "Ejectee Club" and given a special tie.
18. After the Titanic disaster, the S.S. Eastland, a tiny steamer, was so heavily loaded with lifeboats that it became unsteady and finally sank, killing 844 people.
19. The wild Sable Island Horse is endemic to a small sandbar in the Atlantic Ocean, about 100 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia. They were introduced to Sable Island in the 1700s and have now evolved into their own species. The Canadian government has passed a law protecting the remaining 500 wild horses.
20. Each deaf person has a distinctive "name sign" that was given to them by a friend or family member, and as per the hearing culture, only a deaf person is allowed to give a hearing person their own special name sign.
21Mozart's Mass Grave Myth
It's a myth that Mozart was buried in a mass grave. In Vienna, a "common grave" was a non-aristocratic person's burial that the city might dig up and reuse after a decade.
22. In 1993, the former Czechoslovakia broke apart into the independent nations of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It was the only peaceful breakup of a former Eastern Bloc country. It was dubbed the "Velvet Divorce" because it was so peaceful.
23. James Cook mapped Sandy Island, which he located in the Pacific Ocean near New Caledonia, in 1774. After being shown on maps and charts for almost 200 years, an Australian survey ship found proof in 2012 that the island had never been there and may have been a "pumice raft" instead.
24. The feet of Jesus were initially depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, one of the world's most famous works of art, which was created for the Santa Maria delle Grazie cathedral in Milan. They were cut off to make room for a doorway.
25. Inside the U.S. Capitol dome, a painting of George Washington becoming a god takes up most of the space. It's called "The Apotheosis of Washington," and it's clear that it's just a metaphor for how people felt about our first president. He is surrounded by figures and signs from Greek and Roman mythology. Classical art styles were and still are very popular, and this gives you a small idea of how the Romans honored their emperors.
