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At 11, Paralympian and actress Victoria Arlen was left in a vegetative state by two rare neurological conditions for nearly four years. Against the odds, she relearned to walk and speak, won Paralympic gold, and became an ESPN host.
Tongyangxi was a Chinese tradition where a family adopted a girl with the expectation she would marry one of their sons upon reaching marriageable age.
"Change blindness" is a psychological phenomenon where people fail to notice significant visual changes. In one study, nearly half of the participants didn't realize the person they were speaking to had been swapped after a brief distraction.
In 1997, Kathleen Caronna fell into a coma after a parade float accident. She later bought an apartment with her settlement, only for a Yankees pitcher to crash his plane into her building nine years later.
After Grigori Rasputin's death, his daughter Maria became a cabaret dancer and later a lion tamer with the Busch Circus. Following a bear attack, she worked as a riveter in the U.S. and died in Los Angeles.
During WWII, Britain invaded Iceland to prevent Nazi use as a U-boat base. The operation was nearly bloodless, with the only casualty being a Royal Marine who committed suicide en route.
In the weeks before D-Day, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was under extreme stress, consuming six packs of cigarettes, 24 cups of coffee, and averaging two hours of sleep per night.
Eddie Tipton, head of IT security for the Multi-State Lottery Association, orchestrated the largest lottery scam in U.S. history. He altered the odds from 5 million to 1 down to 200 to 1, winning $24 million across five states before his arrest.
Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska is the northernmost U.S. national park, three times the size of Yellowstone but with fewer annual visitors than Yellowstone receives in one day.
Italian adventurer Reinhold Messner climbed Mount Everest without oxygen and scaled Nanga Parbat three times. On his first attempt, he lost his brother and seven toes, then climbed it solo, and a third time to retrieve his brother's remains.
Sources: 681, 682, 683, 684, 685, 686, 687, 688, 689, 690