1Last Meal
The traditional "Last Meal" on death row didn't begin as a final compassionate act for the condemned, but as a way to bribe their ghost to not haunt the executioners.
2. Germany has mandatory quiet time from 1 pm to 3 pm and 10 pm to 6 am Monday - Saturday and all day Sundays and holidays.
3. TBS speeds up shows almost 10% to fit more ads into each timeslot.
4. The Temple of Artemis was burned by a man named Herostratus who sought to live in infamy. Despite his name becoming illegal to say, to deny him that infamy, it eventually became a metonym "Herostratic fame" meaning someone who commits an act to gain notoriety and infamy.
5. A janitor named Henry Darger from Chicago wrote over 6 years a 15,145-page fantasy manuscript with over 300 watercolor illustrations called "In the Realms of the Unreal", which was only discovered after his death.
Latest FactRepublic Video:
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Carl Haber
Carl Haber created a machine that can read the surface of very old audio recordings and reproduce them without having to touch them; using the same type of technology that was used to see the Higgs boson particle.
7. There is a plant called Acacia phlebophylla which only grows in one place in the world, Mount Buffalo in Australia. It also happens to be one of the purest natural sources of the psychadelic drug DMT.
8. The oldest garden that has been tended to continuously is 973 years old, in China, and one of 50 surviving gardens called the Classical Gardens of Suzhou, founded in the 6th Century.
9. When Noam Chomsky was asked to demonstrate his point that sentences could be grammatical yet nonsensical, he came up with the sentence: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
10. A British woman named Amy Dallamura was banned from being within 50 meters of the sea after she unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide by throwing herself into the ocean 50 times costing emergency crews over £1 million.
11Fastest internet connection
In 2014, UK scientists created the fastest ever internet connection, clocking speeds of 1.4 terabits per second, which is enough to download 44 HD movies a second.
12. St. Guinefort was a dog who became a folk saint after saving his owner's child from a snake. He had a grave where people brought their children to for protection and healing, as well as left offerings.
13. Gino Bartali was a champion Italian cyclist. During World War 2, he cycled through Italy carrying messages for the Italian Resistance. He even smuggled Jews in a wagon with a secret compartment telling people it was part of his training.
14. The color of a placebo pill matters. In a classic study, researchers randomized patients to receive different colored placebo pills for pain relief. They found that red placebo pills "worked" the best.
15. Budweiser is actually a stolen name from a Czech brewery in the city of Budvar (Budweiss) and they've been fighting over it since 1907.
16Underwater strip club
There is an abandoned, underwater strip club in Eilat, Israel.
17. Some animals use copper, instead of iron (Haemocyanin) as a way to transport oxygen through their blood.
18. The name "Brân" in Welsh is usually translated as crow or raven, and there was a mythological king of Britain in Welsh mythology called Brân the Blessed.
19. Scientists have discovered colonies of worms living in mounds of methane ice at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
20. There is a mall in China that offers "husband storage", where wives can leave their husbands while they shop.
21Atoms
Approximately half of the atoms in our bodies originated in the Milky Way, while the other half are from other galaxies.
22. In Hara, Ethiopia, Hyenas, and humans have a unique relationship. At night, two Hyena clans fight outside for access to the city. The people do not fear the hyenas and give the winning clan leftover meat that they believe hyenas consume to rid the city of bad spirits.
23. Conan O'Brien required reconstructive surgery on his nose after a street gang, "beat the s*it out of [him]." The damage was so severe that, when asked the extent of the damage, Conan's doctor said, "Broken? Good god, man, it's a bag of bones!"
24. The current Guinness world record for the loudest burp is 109.9 dB, set by Paul Hunn in August 2009. This is louder than a jackhammer at a distance of 1 m.
25. After the first transatlantic telegraph message, the citizens of New York were so excited that they set the City Hall on fire during the celebrations.