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| A Warrior going to war |
2. The current 50-star flag of the United States was designed by a 17-year-old as a school project. He received a B-, but was told the teacher would reconsider if Congress accepted the subpar design. That’s exactly what happened and his grade was changed to an A.
3. Peter the Great was not the most forgiving man. He executed his wife's lover, then forced her to keep her lover's head in a jar of alcohol in her bedroom.
4. Don’t mess with dad. In early Rome, a father could legally kill anyone in his family.
5. During the first battle of the American Civil War, hundreds of civilians from Washington D.C. were so confident that the Union would win that they came to watch the battle. They even brought picnic baskets. When the Union lost, the civilians were caught in the retreat of the Northern army.
6. Due to climate abnormalities, 1816 was called “The Year Without a Summer”. Evidence suggests that it was largely due to the eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies. But some good did come of it: the grey skies and rainfall in Switzerland drove Mary Shelley to stay indoors, where she wrote Frankenstein.
7. The world’s first traffic signal did not work out so well. Installed in London in 1868, it exploded less than a month later, badly injuring the policeman operating it.
8. Dr. Seuss made a bet with his publisher that he could complete a book with only 50 words. He won. That book is titled, Green Eggs and Ham.
9. It’s always a challenge finding the right firmness in a pillow. Ancient Egyptians weren’t so picky. They used slabs of stones as pillows.
10. Have you noticed a cigar in Winston Churchill’s mouth in many of his photos? That’s because he smoked 15 cigars a day!
11. Prior to the 1960s, tobacco companies ran physician-endorsed ads suggesting that smoking had health benefits.
12. Saddam Hussein was awarded the key to the city of Detroit in 1980.
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| Martin Luther King J. Speech |
14. By the end of World War I, the American military had diagnosed almost 400,000 cases of syphilis and gonorrhea, a historic high.
15. In the early days of the modern Olympic Games, medals were awarded for art.
16. In order to begin construction on the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge in 1848, engineers needed to secure a line across the 800- foot chasm. It was far too dangerous to do so from the water, so the lead engineer held a kite-flying contest. The winner, a young local boy, was paid $5 for securing the first line over the river.
17. English was once a language for “commoners”. The British elites spoke French.
18. The longest war in history was between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly. It lasted 335 years, from 1651 to 1986. There were no casualties.
19. In 1856, Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech so captivating that each and every reporter present forgot to take notes. It is believed that the content was a passionate condemnation of slavery, but we can only guess. It is known as “Lincoln’s Lost Speech”.
20. The time span between the Stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus Rex is larger than the span between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and you!
21. Kissing after we say “I Do” is not purely out of romance. When ancient Romans reached an agreement, they would kiss to legally seal the contract. The practice was used in marriage contract as well, which has continued into modern times.
22. The world’s first recorded speeding ticket was given to Walter Arnold in Kent for going four times the speed limit… at 8 miles per hour.
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| Nuclear Testing |
24. Nail polish originated in China as early as 3000 B.C. In ancient Egypt, women used nail color to signify social class rank. A reddish brown was worn by the upper class using henna, while women of lower class could only use pale colors.
25. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that diamonds were tears cried by the gods or particles from falling stars. The early association between diamonds and romance may have started when Romans believed that Cupid’s arrows were tipped with diamonds.
26. While George W. Bush was the target of several assassination attempts and plots, his closest call was by a man named Vladimir Arutyunian. In 2005, Vladimir threw a grenade at the President. The grenade was live and the pin had been pulled, but it did not explode.
27. During the early 1800s, the name Mary was so popular that nearly half the women in U.K. shared that name.
28. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to name a woman to his cabinet.
29. In 1847, Dr. Robert Liston performed an amputation in 25 seconds. He operated so quickly that he accidentally amputated his assistant’s fingers as well. Both later died of sepsis, along with aspectator who reportedly died of shock. This resulted in the only known procedure with a 300% mortality rate.
30. The first American automobile race was held in Chicago in 1895 between 6 cars. The winning car’s average speed was a whopping 7 miles per hour.
31. You would think this rumor was started by a 5th grader: In the 18th century many prominent voices were concerned by an “epidemic” affecting young people who were spending too much time reading books. It was diagnosed as “a dangerous disease”.
32. During the Great Depression, people could not afford new clothes, so they would make them out of flour sacks. Distributors decided to make their sacks more colorful and even patterned to help the population remain somewhat fashionable and boost sales.
33. There is no evidence that Viking helmets ever had horns.
34. We should all thank our dentists today. In early dentistry, teeth were pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers for use as prosthetics.
35. 1.7 billion years ago, there was a natural nuclear reactor that ran for a few hundred thousand years.
36. The first high heeled shoes were worn by Egyptian butchers to help them walk above the bloodied bodies of animal carcasses.
37. The record for the most flowers sold in one day in U.S. history was the day after Elvis Presley died in 1977. Memphis ran out of flowers and scrambled to get additional flowers shipped in from around the nation.
38. Between 1798 and the Civil War, the U.S. Navy lost twothirds as many officers to dueling as it did to more than 60 years of combat at sea.
39. Apparently, there was an early form of Yelp. The world’s oldest known complaint letter was written to a Sumerian copper merchant on a clay tablet almost 4,000 years ago. It read: “You put ingots which were not good before my messenger and said, ‘If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!'” Needless to say, he was an unhappy customer.
40. It took scholars more than two decades to decipher The Rosetta Stone. While scholars were able to quickly translate the 54 lines of Greek and 32 lines of demotic inscribed on the stone, fully deciphering the 14 lines of hieroglyphics took years.
41. In the 1920s, before alarm clocks were invented, there was a profession called a “knocker-up”. It involved going from client to client tapping on their windows and banging on their door with long sticks until they were awoken.
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| Ice-Cream |
43. Ancient Romans committed a faux pas in today’s fashion. They wore socks with sandals.
44. Jack the Ripper only killed on the weekends in the early morning hours. All five victims were killed on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
45. In English gambling dens in the 18th century, a person was hired solely to swallow the dice in the event of a police raid.
46. Many consider the wheel to be the first big invention, but it was actually invented thousands of years after boats, woven cloth, sewing needles, rope and even the flute.
47. No one will ever rank higher in the U.S. Military than George Washington.
48. Neil Armstrong’s NASA application was almost rejected for being late.
49. During the Boston Tea Party, 342 chests of tea were thrown into the Harbor.
50. JFK, Aldous Huxley, and C.S. Lewis all died on the same day.
Also Read:- Top 50 Historical Facts.
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