26Record-Breaking Bald Eagle Nests
Bald eagle nests can weigh around 1 metric ton, and the biggest recorded is 2.7 metric tons.
27. The US Air Force uses the term "elephant walks" to describe the close formation taxiing of a large number of military aircraft prior to takeoff. These exercises serve a practical purpose-preparing aircrews for conflict operations that require mass take-offs-and also serve as a show of force.
28. Happy Days producers intentionally sought a short actor to play Fonzie. They didn't want his character to overshadow the rest of the cast, who were all under 6 feet tall. Despite their intent, Henry Winkler (5'6") still became the breakout star.
29. Indigenous Indians took over and occupied Alcatraz Island from 1969 to 1971, shortly after its closing, to protest the use of their land for the prison.
30. Perhaps counterintuitively, defibrillators do not shock the heart to get it to beat normally-the shock actually stops the heart from beating altogether. This allows the natural automatic pacemaker of the heart to operate again and restore the heart's rhythm to normal.
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31Apollo Rocket Fins Purpose
The fins on the Apollo rockets existed only to provide an additional moment of stable flight so a crew member could reach an abort handle. The fins did not provide stability during normal operational flight.
32. The common ancestor of all vertebrates had not 3 but 4 cones for detecting color. Most mammals later lost two cones from being nocturnal, and primates evolved one back after that.
33. There was a secret facility in the Swedish archipelago for training seals for the navy during the Second World War. The trainers taught the seals to locate mines, submarines, and torpedoes that had missed their targets.
34. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is the frontman for his own band called Ablinken, with songs such as "Lip Service" published on Spotify.
35. In 1977, Ali Maow Maalin was the last person known to have been infected with the naturally occurring Variola minor smallpox. He fully recovered and later became one of the 10,000 volunteers who participated in the effort to help eradicate polio in Somalia. Ali died in 2013 from malaria.
