Weird Facts & Trivia 21
- There are more statues of Sacajewa, Lewis & Clark's female Indian guide, in the United States than any other women. Read More 2
- To raise public revenue, Emperor Vespasian--who built the Colosseum--was the first to introduce pay toilets in the city of Rome. When his son and successor Titus protested that the toilets were raising a stink with the poor, Vespasian held a coin up to his nose and said, "money doesn't stink." Today, Romans still refer to public toilets as vespasiano.
- Between the time it was discovered and the time it was unclassified as a planet, Pluto did not even complete one revolution around the sun. Source
- David Tennant fulfilled a pianist’s dying wish by using his skull in a performance of Hamlet. Source
- “Ugly Laws” in the US banned many disabled people from appearing in public until the 1970s. Source
- Greenland has the highest suicide rate in the world. Source
- Nearly 10% of Canadians have had sex in a canoe. Source
- Until Sunday, September 3rd, 1967, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekend at 5 p.m. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize 'this' was the day of the changeover.
- A young twenty-something year old CEO took over a $9M company, fired 2/3rd of all managers and gave the power to the employees. Now it has a turnover of over $200m. Source
- The first man to fly and the first man to walk on the moon were alive at the same time. Neil Armstrong was 17 when Orville Wright died. Source
- When coming to power in January 1933, the Nazi Party passed a comprehensive set of animal protection laws, with Hitler saying “In the new Reich, no more animal cruelty will be allowed“. Source
- On average, the life span of an American dollar bill is eighteen months.
- Photoshop detects if you are trying to edit an image of currency, and attempts to stop you from opening/printing the file. Source
- A Bronx bus driver fed up with the daily annoyances and nonsense of it all, William Cimillo, 38, climbed behind the wheel of his bus one morning in 1947 and took a 1,300-mile detour. He said later that he was overcome by “that old spring-time urge.” He started driving, and he didn’t stop until he reached Florida, where he was found two weeks later. During the entire trip, no one ever asked him why he was driving an empty New York bus down the highway. The bus company filed charges of grand larceny against him, but the public rallied in support of him, feeling that Cimillo simply gave in to that “yearning for escape” that everyone feels at one time or another. So eventually the company forgave him and put him back on the job, on the condition that he was on probation for one year. Source
- All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill. FALSE! Only the 26 on the front of the memorial. Additionally, the Lincoln Memorial itself only has 48 states listed, since that's how many there were when it was completed.
- A floating British base was abandoned until a rogue DJ moved there. He declared the floating fortress the Principality of Sealand. He raised a flag, named himself Prince and his wife Princess. Sealand withstood court challenges, and remains an independent nation to this day. Source
- The single largest infiltration of the United States government in history was committed by the Church of Scientology in order to purge unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard. Source
- In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10. This allows the company name to be displayed in the middle.
- One third of married couples in Canada have separate bedrooms. Source
- In 1862 Ulysses Grant issued Gen. Order 11 order expelling the jews frm TN, MS, KY. Source
- Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer. Unverified (likely false)
- It’s normal to have an urge to jump off a cliff. Source
- Malawi has a patient to doctor ratio of 88,321 to 1 which translates to 173 doctors for a population of over 15 million people. Source
- Picasso drew a sketch on the back of every check he wrote to pay a bill, knowing that almost everyone would save the check without cashing it because the picture made the check worth more than face value. Source
- The offspring of two sets of identical twins are legally cousins but genetically siblings. Source
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