History, science, language, pop culture, and human behavior all get a turn in this mixtape of facts. Some are surprising, some are unsettling, and some sound too strange to be true, but all of them are the kind of details that make old subjects feel new again.
Aldi CEO Ransom Tax Dispute
1. After Theo Albrecht, CEO of the discount grocery chain ALDI, was abducted he negotiated the ransom amount and, once freed, sought to have that payment treated as a tax-deductible business expense in court.
2. An American citizen, Monte Melkonian joined the Nagorno-Karabakh war in the early 1990s and, with limited prior military experience, rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel commanding about 4,000 men; he is honored as a hero in Armenia with statues erected in his memory.
3. In Portugal in 1960 two students were arrested and given seven-year prison sentences for ‘raising a toast to freedom,’ and the publicity inspired British lawyer Peter Benenson to lay the foundation for one of the world’s largest human rights organizations, Amnesty International.
4. In 1983 Steve Jobs signed a typed letter that read, ‘I’m afraid I don’t sign autographs,’ and the item sold for $478,939 at an auction in 2022.
5. During the 1920s famine in Russia people were driven to eat raw seeds, grass, dirt, dogs, cats, and leather horse harnesses, and at its height some consumed and sold human body parts as meat; despite reports of cannibalism authorities took no action because it was regarded as a legitimate means of survival.
6. James Price was an 18th-century chemist and alchemist who claimed he could turn mercury into gold. When challenged to perform the conversion a second time before credible witnesses, he drank prussic acid (cyanide) and killed himself.
7. On November 29, 2001, Mike Myers received the final letter George Harrison ever wrote. A fan of parody, Harrison wrote the note by hand to express his admiration for Myers’ Austin Powers movies. Myers received it on the set of Austin Powers 3 on the same day Harrison died.
8. The ‘five stages of grief’ framework has no factual or scientific basis, and its creator Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said the stages are not a linear and predictable progression and that she regretted writing them in a way that was misunderstood.
9. Rival painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius competed in ancient Greece to create the most realistic imagery. The story says Zeuxis revealed painted grapes so convincing that birds swooped down to peck them, and when he asked Parrhasius to draw back the curtain on his painting, Zeuxis was fooled because the curtain itself was painted and conceded defeat.
10. Chris Columbus had been set to direct National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation but pulled out after difficult meetings with its star, Chevy Chase. He instead directed Home Alone, which is the top-grossing Christmas movie ever.
Bootleg Recordings on X-rays
11. During the Cold War, most records were banned in the Soviet Union. This spawned an era of bootlegging in which music was recorded onto x-ray film and smuggled in.
12. Whoopi Goldberg is afraid of flying and travels only by tour bus because she witnessed a mid-air plane collision in San Diego in 1978.
13. Beethoven disliked giving piano lessons except when the student was exceptionally talented or when the pupil was an attractive young woman, irrespective of her ability.
14. In 1225 A.D., the Catholic bishop Robert Grosseteste described the birth of the Universe as an explosion and the crystallization of matter into stars and planets arranged in nested spheres around Earth, about four centuries before Newton proposed gravity and seven centuries before the Big Bang theory.
15. In Ancient Rome, gladiators carried out product placements in the arena. An early script for the film Gladiator (2000) included this, but it was removed because of concerns it would seem anachronistic.
16. In 2001 a comic publisher in Alabama refused to print the first issue of Alias because it suggested Luke Cage and Jessica Jones were engaging in interracial anal sex, which the publisher labeled “offensive.”
17. Marina Ratner proved her most important theorem after turning 50, challenging the widespread belief that only younger mathematicians produce major breakthroughs.
18. An unusual Harry Potter fan theory offers a different view of the Sorting Hat. It argues that to be placed in Gryffindor, a student must actively ask the Hat for that house. Supporters cite occasions when Harry, Hermione, and Ron fretted about their placements yet ended up in Gryffindor; for example, when Harry tried on the Hat it considered other houses before choosing Gryffindor because Harry, in effect, asked for it. The same dynamic is thought to have occurred with Hermione, Ron, and Neville, who may have signaled preferences to the Hat without explicitly naming Gryffindor. The idea holds that pupils who do not initially display Gryffindor traits can develop them after consciously selecting that house. In this reading, the Sorting Hat helps students recognize their goals and what they value, guiding them toward their preferred path. The theory also claims that about 80% of students are placed in their first-choice house, emphasizing the role of personal desire in the sorting process. Overall, this hypothesis presents an alternative interpretation of how the Sorting Hat operates, proposing that individual wishes and choices matter more than commonly assumed and giving students the chance to discover and embrace bravery and other house qualities.
19. English is regarded as the global “language of aviation.” Pilots everywhere are required to learn and speak English, regardless of their nationality or native tongue.
20. After the patent on the leading emergency asthma drug albuterol expired, the companies that held the patent lobbied to have their own inhalers banned for environmental reasons so they could file a new patent and continue to monopolize the market.
Actor Isolated During Filming
21. While filming the 2014 movie “Fury”, Shia LaBeouf engaged in extreme method acting, cutting his face, pulling a tooth, and not bathing, which made him so unpopular with crew and fellow actors that he was lodged at a bed and breakfast apart from the rest of the cast.
22. The Fenelon Place Elevator is a narrow-gauge funicular in Dubuque, Iowa, with a 3-foot (914 mm) gauge. Also known as the Fourth Street Elevator, it is claimed to be the shortest and steepest railroad in the world, though several other funiculars make the same claim. It was individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
23. A poison is any substance that can cause harm by disrupting normal biological functions when it is ingested, inhaled, or absorbed. A toxin is a type of poison produced by living organisms, such as bacteria, plants, or animals, which causes harm when introduced into the body. In short, all toxins are poisons, but not all poisons are toxins; the key distinction is that toxins have a biological origin, whereas poisons can come from any source, natural or synthetic.
24. Edgar Allan Poe is regarded as one of the founders of the detective genre. He created one of the earliest detectives who solved mysteries by relying on the facts of the crime. He is credited with inventing the “least likely suspect” trope and the plot device where the perpetrator frames another person by planting evidence.
25. In 1986, before fitness tracking became popular, Puma released a fitness-tracking sneaker called the RS-Computer Shoe. It included a disk, a cable, and a 46-page instruction manual, and it cost $200. It did not sell well because people questioned the point, asking things like, “Why would you want to know how far you run?”
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