In 1993, a Missouri man purposely damaged
a levee on the Mississippi river to delay his wife coming home from work so he could
party, drink and have an affair. The river flooded 14,000 acres of land. He was later arrested and convicted of causing
a catastrophe and sentenced to life in prison. 1. The navy is now teaching sailors Celestial
Navigation as a response to potential cyber-attacks to ship's navigation systems. 2. There are a class of people in Japan referred
to as Cyber Homeless who live at cyber cafes because they are a cheaper alternative than
an apartment. The cafes offer free showers and sell underwear. 3. Swedish blood donors receive a thank you text
after they donate blood, but they also receive a text whenever their blood is used to help
someone. 4. There is a Santa Claus University that teaches
professional Santa Claus skills like toy knowledge, poses and how to avoid lawsuits. A top-level Santa Claus can make up to $100,000
a year. 5. Writing was likely only invented from scratch
three times in history: in the Middle east, China and Central America. All other alphabets and writing systems were
either derived from or inspired by others, or were too incomplete to fully express the
spoken language. 6. In 1941 the world’s largest seed bank, created
by botanist Nikolai Vavilov, was housed in Leningrad. As the Germans surrounded the city forcing
a mass starvation, Vavilov’s scientists refused to eat from the seed collection, instead
slowly dying of hunger as they maintained 16 rooms of edible plants. 7. If Apple didn’t hold $181 billion overseas,
it would owe $59 billion in US taxes. 8. A man from New Zealand named Nigel Richards
memorised the French dictionary to win the French Scrabble Championship. He can’t speak French, but was able to correct
his opponents when they attempted to play an incorrect word. 9. More than 1,000 experts including Stephen
Hawking, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak have signed an open letter urging a global ban
on AI weapons systems. 10. When the USS West Virginia was finally raised
after being sunk during the bombing of Pearl Harbor, three deceased men were found in an
airtight storeroom. On the calendar, 16 days were crossed off
in red pencil. 11. A Norwegian student named Kristoffer Koch
spent $27 on Bitcoins, forgot about them. A few years later he realised they were worth
$886,000. 12. A New Zealand trucker fell onto a high pressure
air valve. It punctured his left butt and inflated him
to twice his size, nearly killing him. He survived, but it took three days to fart
and burp out the excess air. 13. Lenovo’s CEO Yang Yuanqing received a $3
million bonus as a reward for record profits in 2012, which he in-turn redistributed to
about 10,000 of Lenovo’s employees. He made a similar gift of $3.25 million again
in 2013. 14. Indian housewives hold 11% of the World’s
gold. That is more than the reserves of the USA,
IMF, Switzerland and Germany put together. 15. For his time as James Bond, Daniel Craig has
the privilege of taking any Aston Martin from the factory for the rest of his life. The luck bugger. 16. During the process of becoming a butterfly,
the entire caterpillar will break down into a liquid. 17. To be a London black cab driver, one is expected
to know over 25,000 roads and 50,000 points of interest and pass a test called “The
Knowledge”. To pass the exam, applicants usually need
twelve appearances and 34 months of preparation. 18. In 1956 the US government set many containers
of beer next to two atomic bombs that were detonated to determine if the beer was still
drinkable. Their conclusion: in the event of a nuclear
war, beer is perfectly safe to drink. 19. In Russia, during times of economic disparity
or high inflation, teachers in the remote regions were paid in Vodka. 20. In ’n’ Out Burger used to let customers
add as many extra patties with cheese as they wanted to their burgers, until one group of
8 people ordered one burger with 100 patties which contained 19,490 calories. 21. Manute Bol, the tallest player in the history
of the NBA was also the only player in the NBA to have killed a lion with a spear and
to have paid 80 cows for his wife. 22. In 2010, a man who was lost in the woods of
Northern Saskatchewan, Canada, chopped down some power lines so that workmen would have
to come and rescue him. 23. The Rhinoceros Party was a registered political
party in Canada between the 1960s and 90s. It was led by Cornelius, a rhinoceros, and
promised to repeal the law of gravity and change Canada’s currency to bubble gum,
so it could be inflated or deflated at will. 24. In 1976 an underachieving Princeton junior
undergraduate wrote a term paper describing how to make a nuclear bomb. He got an “A” but never got his paper
back because it was seized by the FBI. 25. In October of 1994 Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump,
The Shawshank Redemption and Jurassic Park were all in theatres at the same time. 26. In Japan there is a hotel that has been in
business for more than 1,300 years and all this time it has been operated by the same
family for 46 generations. 27. According to NASA, nuclear power has prevented
over 2 million deaths in the past 40 years as a result of lower air pollution from reduced
coal usage. 28. On Titan the atmosphere is so thick and the
gravity so low that humans could fly though it by flapping homemade “wings” attached
to their arms. 29. Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, a Great Depression-era
gangster and notorious bank robber, endeared himself to the public by destroying mortgage
papers at the banks he robbed, freeing many from their debts. 30. In 1808 a gentlemen’s duel took place at
2,000 ft in a pair of hot air balloons. Each man used a blunderbuss to attempt to
destroy the other’s balloon. 31. A survey found that 28% of IT professionals
hide their career from family and friends out of fear of being asked to provide free
tech support. 32. In 2005 a 12-year-old girl was abducted in
Ethiopia and her captors tried to force he into an arranged marriage. She was rescued by three lions who defended
her for three days from her attackers. 33. When a massive power outage struck Southern
California in the 1990s, Los Angeles residents reportedly called 911 to express alarm about
strange clouds hovering overhead; they were seeing the Milky Way for the first time. 34. Sheared sheep don’t recognise each other
and fight for a few days afterwards to re-establish hierarchy. 35. When Stephen Hawking gave a lecture in Japan
he was asked not to mention the possible re-collapse of the universe, billions of years into the
future, for fears of the effects on the stock exchange. 36. The Mexican drug cartels have recently been
kidnapping technicians and making them build their own private cell phone network in Mexico. 37. A man earned 4 million airline miles for free
without breaking any laws by using his credit card to purchase free-delivery $1 coins from
the US mint. 38. If a dead whale is found on a British beach,
then by law, the head belongs to the king and the tail to the queen. 39. Houston airport received a lot of complaints
about baggage wait times. In response, they moved the baggage claim
area further away so that the walk was longer than the wait, subsequently, the number of
complaints dropped significantly. 40. When people are electrocuted and thrown far
distances, it is the result of sudden and violent muscle contractions, it is not caused
by the shock itself. This has raised questions as to the actual
strength and capabilities of the muscles in the human body. 41. In 2006, David Copperfield used slight of
hand to trick armed robbers into believing he had nothing, even though he was carrying
his passport, wallet and cell phone. 42. Ernest Hemingway took a urinal from his favourite
bar and moved it into his Key West home, arguing that he had “pissed away” so much of his
money into the urinal that he owned it. 43. “Killing Season” is a British medical
term used to describe the time around August when the newly qualified doctors join the
National Health Service. 44. During the siege of Jerusalem in 1917, the
British, in an effort to capture the city from an entrenched Ottoman garrison, started
to airdrop cigarettes filled with large doses of Opium, hoping that the Ottomans would be
too stoned to fight. It worked. 45. Until it was forcibly supressed during WWI,
German was the second most spoken language in the US with many local governments, schools
and newspapers operating in German. 46. In 2011 researchers let 100 paper planes go
from 23 miles above Germany. Some have since been found in Canada, America,
Australia and South Africa. 47. Samuel L Jackson has a clause in all his movie
contracts stating that he gets two days off a week to play golf and the producers have
to pay for it. 48. It would take 76 days for the average person
to read all the Terms and Conditions they agree to in a year. 49. PC Pitstop, a software company, buried a $1,000
prize deep within its Terms of Service to see if anyone actually read them. After 5 months and over 3,000 sales later
someone eventually claimed the prize. 50. Contrary to popular belief, Las Vegas is far
from the gambling capital of the world. Macau’s gambling revenue is a whopping five
times larger. 51. An American man named Mike Merrill decided
to sell shares in himself at $1 a share, with 100,000 shares up for grabs in total. Allowing his stockholders to decide what he
should do with his life. 52. In 1942 there was a man known as the Phantom
Barber who would break into people’s houses in Mississippi at night and cut their hair. 53. Until the 1980s physicians routinely operated
on infants without any aesthetic, administering only muscle relaxants to prevent motion, under
the belief that infants could not feel pain. 54. In 2006 a man from Portland, Oregon hired
a hit man to kill his wife. His wife ended up killing the hit man with
her bare hands. 55. Despite the world’s hottest chili pepper
scoring 2 million Scoville Heat Units, there is another, hotter cactus called Euphorbia
Resinifera that produces a resin that hits an estimated 16 billion Scovilles. 56. In 2000 a Mexican woman named Ines Ramirez
Perez successfully performed a C-section on herself after 12 hours of continuous pain
with a kitchen knife and three glasses of hard spirits, whilst her husband was out drinking
at a bar. 57. An albatross can sleep whilst it flies. 58. Hummingbirds can't walk, their legs are too
small and weak. 59. At 120 miles per hour, a Formula One car generates
so much downforce that it could drive upside down on the roof of a tunnel. 60. If you’re in Detroit and you walk south,
you’ll actually walk into Canada. 61. The stickers on fruit are edible. They are usually made out of edible paper
and even the glue holding it to the fruit is food grade. 62. Black roses do exist, but they only grow in
exceptionally small numbers in the Turkish village of Halfeti. This is the only place in the world they will
grow due to the unique properties of the soil caused by the nearby Euphrates river. 63. You're completely blind for about 40 minutes
a day. When your eyes move, your brain purposely
blocks your vision to avoid blurring, which is why you can't see the motion of your eyes
in a mirror. It's called saccidic masking, and without
it your life would be like watching a constant movie that's filmed with a shaky, handheld
camera. 64. In Ancient Greece, throwing an apple at someone
was a way of declaring your love for them. 65. During the 18th Century, you could pay your
admission to London zoo by bringing in a dog or cat to feed to the lions. 66. Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman solved
a 100-year-old maths problem called the Poincare conjecture. He declined the Fields medal and $1 million
in awards, because he hated the recognition that the maths community gives to people who
prove things. 67. It is illegal to not flush the toilet in Singapore. If you fail to flush, you'll be forking out
over $150 in fines. What's more, police officers have been known
to check. 68. In France, by law a bakery has to make all
the bread it sells from scratch in order to have the right to be called a bakery. 69. In China if you hit someone with your car
you must pay for their medical care for the rest of their life. However, if you kill someone with your car
you only pay a one-time fee. For this reason, it is fairly common for people
to go back and kill someone they accidentally hit. 70. NASA hires a man to sniff everything that
they send into space. If he doesn’t like the smell, it doesn’t
go into space. His job sounds strange but should not be underestimated,
nasty smells can be extremely hazardous when you’re stuck in a small cabin for months
with no windows. 71. In the Chinese city of Chongqing, cell phone
addicts have their own sidewalk lane. 72. More people drown in deserts than die of dehydration. Because when it rains in the desert, it rains! When desert rain storms do happen they are
extremely violent. 73. On average United States Congress brings up
Hitler 7.7 times per month. 74. You exert more energy when you unfold a single
piece of paper than in all the radio waves we have ever collected from outer space. 75. Samsung is responsible for 25% of South Korea's
GDP. 76. Some Canadian police departments give out
"positive tickets" to thank people for doing good. 77. The first person to be sentenced to the stocks
in Boston was Edward Palmer, the person who built the stocks. His crime was charging too much for building
the stocks. 78. When “The Prince and the Frog” came out
in cinemas, 50 children were hospitalised with salmonella from kissing frogs. 79. In Holland’s embassy in Moscow, two Siamese
cats kept meowing and clawing at the walls of the building. Their owners finally investigated, thinking
they would find mice. Instead, they found microphones hidden by
Russian spies. 80. In 1985, a man from New Orleans drowned at
a party attended by 100 lifeguards. The party was to celebrate going an entire
summer without a drowning in a city pool. 81. When you get a kidney transplant, it’s more
common to just leave your original kidneys in your body and put the 3rd kidney in your
pelvis. 82. In the early 1900s, a wave of molasses rushed
through the streets of Boston at 35 mph killing 21 people and injuring 150. It has since been named the Boston Molassacre. 83. Cosmic rays from outer space cause glitches
in your electronics. In some electronics, cosmic rays are the primary
source of software errors. Cosmic rays are one of the main reasons that
servers and high reliability computers use error correcting RAM.
84. If a tree is low on a particular type of nutrient
it will “borrow” some from its neighbouring trees via its roots, and give the nutrients
back at a later date. This happens more often in the winter months. 85. There used to exist a flying reptile that
was as tall as a giraffe called a Quetzalcoatlus. 86. In Australia in 1932, there was a war called
the “Emu War”, the Australian military tried to fight off Emus that were running
Amok across Western Australia, using machine guns. The emus won. 87. French Writer Guy de Maupassant ate lunch
in the restaurant inside the Eiffel tower almost every day because he hated the tower
and that was the only place in Paris where he couldn’t see it. 88. US Scientists calculated that Santa would
have to visit 822 homes a second to deliver all presents on Christmas Eve, but who’s
to say he can’t! 89. America has a $4 billion stockpile of milk
fat for cheese and butter that is sitting in a cave in Missouri. 90. During the first Opium War of 1839, 19,000
British troops fought against 200,000 Chinese. The Chinese had 20,000 casualties, the British
just 69. This marked the start of the so called “Century
of Humiliation” in China. 91. Microsoft has created 3 billionaires and roughly
12,000 millionaires. 92. In 1929, the US supreme court voted 8-1 in
favour of a Eugenics program requiring forced sterilisation of citizens deemed not smart
enough to reproduce. 93. Merriam-Webmaster added “McJob” to their
dictionaries, defined as “a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little
opportunity for advancement”. McDonald’s asked for it to be removed, to
which they replied “we stand by the accuracy and appropriateness of our definition”. 94. Starbucks pays more for its employee’s health
insurance than it pays for coffee. 95. During the filming of Borat, the FBI assigned
a team to follow Sacha Baron Cohen due to countless reports of “A middle eastern man
traveling the Midwest in an ice cream truck”. 96. Porn sites are the sites you’re statistically
least likely to get malware from, due to them being strictly monitored, because malware
is bad for repeat business. On the other hand, you’re most likely to
get malware from religious sites. A study found that the average religious website
is infected with 115 malware threats. 97. Just 24 rabbits were set loose into Australia. Within 67 years their population had grown
to 10 billion. Years of geographical isolation has left Australia
with no natural predator to the rabbit. They migrated across Australia at a rate of
80 miles per year. 98. There are still completely unexplored passageways
inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. 99. In 1847 a doctor named Robert Liston performed
an amputation in 25 seconds, operating so quickly that he accidentally amputated his
assistant’s fingers as well. Both later died of sepsis, and a spectator
reportedly died of shock. To date this is the only known medical procedure
to have a 300% mortality rate. 100. If you could fold a piece of paper in half
42 times it would reach the moon. And if you could fold it 103 times it would
be as thick as the observable universe.
