Man Flooded Levee to Delay His Wife
26. A Missouri man purposely damaged a levee on the Mississippi River to delay his wife coming home so he could party. The flooding covered 14,000 acres, and he was later arrested, convicted of causing a catastrophe, and sentenced to life in prison.
27. When Robert Downey Jr. was eight, his father offered him drugs, which led to a long life of substance and alcohol abuse. RDJ credits Mel Gibson with helping him get sober and narcotic free.
28. David Copperfield was once robbed at gunpoint, but he successfully performed an illusion that convinced the robbers his pockets were empty when they were not.
29. The Beatles first saw a TV remote control when they visited Elvis Presley in 1965. McCartney remarked, “He was just aiming it at the TV, and the channels were changing and we go ‘Whoa! He is indeed the mighty God. He can turn the channels without approaching the television set!'”
30. In 1996, when Wendy Day took Eminem’s demo to different labels, she could not get any of them to even consider signing him because he was white. So she created the Rap Olympics to showcase his talent and bring attention back to lyricism, and at the event, Em made the contact that led to signing a deal.
31. Street food in Vietnam is so available, fast, and cheap that international fast food chains like McDonald’s flopped after entering the market. Local options met everyday demand so well that the global brands could not gain traction.
32. Hank Williams was late on his way to a show when he died in a car with a friend. When Williams’ death was announced, the crowd started laughing, thinking it was an excuse, but after Hawkshaw Hawkins started singing “I Saw The Light” as a tribute, they realized Williams was dead and sang along.
33. The Beatles stopped touring in part because the audiences screamed so loudly that no one could hear them play. The sheer volume made live performances difficult to carry on.
34. In 2014, the Copenhagen Zoo euthanized a healthy giraffe because it wanted to prevent him from breeding. The animal was killed, skinned, and fed to the zoo’s lions, all in full view of children.
35. When Dolly Parton went to a Dolly Parton look-alike contest, she lost to a man dressed like her. The result made the competition even more surprising.
Pepsi and Coke Triggered Different Brain Responses
36. In a blind taste test, Pepsi activated more dopamine receptors than Coca-Cola. But when participants were told they were drinking Coke, it became the greater dopamine-producing beverage over Pepsi, even when they were lied to. The result most likely reflected Coke’s marketing.
37. The term “antisocial” is very commonly misused. It actually means violently against society and the rules imposed upon it, while the term for simply being shut off or introverted is “asocial”.
38. The FBI mounted a 4-year-long undercover surveillance operation to nab Jared “The Subway Guy” Fogle. The investigation followed inappropriate comments he made about middle school girls to a female reporter.
39. Raiders of the Lost Ark was originally going to feature an elaborate fight scene between Indiana Jones and a master swordsman. But Harrison Ford was ill, so the filmmakers had Indy pull out a gun and shoot him instead.
40. Prison inmates are teaching testy dogs civility. There may be no better place for bite-prone animals to receive the constant care they need to break out of their own prisons. The men who train the animals learn responsibility and acquire a skill they can use outside the prison walls.
41. Mount Kosciuszko was long recognized as the tallest mountain in Australia, but it was actually shorter than Mount Townsend. To correct the error, the names of the mountains were simply swapped.
42. The Soviets realized that the Americans and British were developing an atomic bomb when they noticed that Western scientists had stopped publishing papers on nuclear science. Correctly guessing that nuclear science had been made a state secret, they began their own program.
43. The Witcher 3 script contains 450,000 words, roughly equal to 4 novels. It took 950 voice actors and 2.5 years to complete the voice recording.
44. Carrie, Stephen King’s first novel that launched his career, was rescued from the trash can after his wife Tabatha removed the crumpled up pages, read them, and told her husband she wanted to know the rest of the story.
45. A chimpanzee was observed wearing a piece of grass in her ear with no apparent function. After other members of her group started imitating her, researchers realized they were witnessing the first fashion statement observed in another animal.
How Deaf Dreamers Communicate
46. In the dreams of deaf people, they still do not hear, but the people in their dreams may know sign language, or communication may be essentially telepathic. The dreams preserve the same lack of hearing while changing how everyone else is understood.
47. Indonesian entrepreneurs make plastic bags using cassava starch, vegetable oil, and organic resins. The resulting “100% bio-based” material is biodegradable and compostable, breaking down over a period of months on land or at sea, or instantly in hot water.
48. Of Mim, an eastern grey kangaroo, was raised by a family who hand-fed her. After they released her, Mim roamed wild for years, but when wildfires burned near the family’s home in Kulnura, Australia, she turned up at their door seeking shelter and they let her stay indoors, where she lounged on a blanket.
49. In 2017, a sailor was stranded and alone on a cargo ship near the Suez Canal for almost 4 years. Since the owner was having financial difficulties and the captain had gone ashore, the local court declared the sailor the legal guardian.
50. Eels swim from a lake in Australia through stormwater drains and across the ocean to lay eggs in New Caledonia, where they die. Their eggs hatch and make the return journey back to the lake they came from.
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