1Buddy Holly's Inheritance
When Buddy Holly died six months after being married, his widow inherited everything but signed over 50% to his family.
2. The aardwolf knows not to destroy its food sources. Aardwolves eat part of a termite mound, leave it, and return a few months later when the colony has rebuilt so it can have another meal. An aardwolf keeps track of mounds it has attacked and can eat 250,000 termites in a single night.
3. The Japanese turned the third of their superbattleships (after Yamato and Musashi) into the largest aircraft carrier ever built at the time. After four years of construction at enormous cost, she left the shipyard and was immediately sunk by a submarine.
4. The crews of Apollo 11, 12, and 14 had to spend three weeks in quarantine after returning to Earth because of the possibility that they might have spread contagions from the moon on earth.
5. Sperm whales use babysitters. Sperm whale youths cannot dive as deep as their mothers, so when the mother needs to forage in the deep, the youth is kept safe by swimming with other adult whales.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Ace's Hit: Not About Cheating
In 1974, the band Ace had their only hit, "How Long (has this been going on)." The song is not about a cheating girlfriend. It's about the band's bass player, who was moonlighting with another band.
7. Just like in the Tarantino film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," Sharon Tate really did have the habit of going barefoot in Los Angeles. When she went to restaurants with a "No Shoes, No Service" rule, she would frequently put rubber bands around her ankles to pretend that she was wearing sandals.
8. One of Hitler's earliest allies and closest friends, Ernst Röhm, was actually openly homosexual, despite the Nazis' hatred for homosexuality. He was the leader of the SA until 1934, when he was killed during the Night of the Long Knives.
9. The 'Puckle Gun," considered to be one of the first machine guns (1718), had a specialized square-shaped bullet to be used against Turks as a means to "convince the Turks of the benefits of Christian civilization."
10. The ending of "The Bourne Supremacy" was reshot just two weeks before its release. Director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon came up with a new idea that would cost $200,000 and involve pulling Damon from the set of Ocean's 12. The movie scored 10 points higher with the new ending and made $176 million.
11Blunt vs. Yankovic: Parody Dispute
James Blunt gave Weird Al Yankovic permission to parody his single "You're Beautiful." But after Yankovic recorded "You're Pitiful," Blunt's record label refused to let it be commercially released. Yankovic didn't include it on his album. Instead, he released it as a free digital download.
12. In 2001, Disneyland tried to re-theme their aging "Submarine Voyage" attraction around Atlantis: The Lost Empire, but the movie flopped. They tried again with Treasure Planet, but that was a flop too. They finally succeeded with Finding Nemo in 2005.
13. A man suffering from fatal familial insomnia, a condition whereby you become biologically incapable of sleep, attempted vitamin therapy, sensory deprivation, stimulants, and anesthesia to sleep, which only managed to prolong his life by 12 months.
14. In 2021, a man in Spain died inside the leg of a paper-mache Stegosaurus. It was thought the man entered the Stegosaurus to retrieve his phone, and days later he was found by a father and son who noticed a smell coming from the statue.
15. The word "dumpster" wasn't added to the Scrabble dictionary until 2022 due to it being a trademark before.
16Simply Orange Juice: Black Book Algorithm
Coca-Cola's Simply Orange Juice is made by an algorithm known as the Black Book. Oranges are divided by source, type, sweetness, acidity, etc. flash-pasteurized, and then combined with flavor packages according to the Black Book algorithm to have a consistent taste countrywide and year-round.
17. An estimated 50,000 Irish were made into indentured servants by Cromwell after he took Ireland in 1653.
18. Winslow's Soothing Syrup was a medicine used in the early 1900s to quiet infants and teething children. Popular in the US and UK, it took twenty years of doctors' complaints before it was withdrawn from the market for being a "baby killer." Its main ingredient was morphine.
19. A 69-year-old South Korean woman named Cha Sa-soon gave her written driving test 960 times before she finally passed and was given her license.
20. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian pastor who believed in the power of teaching through example, which he felt would be just as powerful as preaching.
21Guadalupe Island: Cats vs. Elephant Seals
Feral cats on Guadalupe Island have been observed stealing milk from elephant seals. The cats sneak up on a nursing pup and bat at them until the pup retreats, at which point the cat licks up the milk from the mother's teat. Some cats have been observed being chased off by elephant seals.
22. Renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright's houses were famously leaky due to his unconventional design choices and use of materials, which often resulted in moisture issues.
23. Most audio recordings contain a background "mains hum" caused by electric power grid oscillations. This hum can be matched with grid readings to date the clip to the second it was recorded, providing a precise time stamp.
24. Sylvester Stallone is the only actor to have starred in a #1 box office movie across six consecutive decades.
25. The Big Gulp, a popular drink size sold at 7-Eleven stores, was invented in 1976 after Coca-Cola suggested that they use 32-ounce cups. This was much larger than the 20-ounce cups being used by McDonald's at the time. The first regional order of 500 Big Gulp cups sold out in a week, eventually forcing automakers to make cupholders bigger as the drink's popularity grew.
