fact
Guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier take an average of six hours to prepare their uniform. They are also required to memorize 35 pages of information about Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, including the locations of 300 graves and who is buried in each one. 00
Coco Chanel made sun bathing fashionable. Historically exposure to the sun had been the mark of laborers and a milky skin used to be a sure sign of aristocracy. Chanel took in the sun, making suntans not only acceptable, but a symbol denoting a life of privilege and leisure. 00
An IT Director, fed up with sales calls where the caller lied to reach IT staff, said to transfer one such caller ‘straight to hell’. This led to the creation of a special extension for such calls where horrible hold music and faked queue messages play on an endless loop to increase hold time. 00
90 years before the invention of the modern wireless telephone, Alexander Graham Bell invented a device that could transmit speech using sunlight. Bell was immensely proud of the achievement, to the point that he wanted to name his new second daughter “Photophone”, which was subtly discouraged by his wife Mabel Bell (they instead chose “Marian”, […]
Recalling a memory more often makes the memory less accurate.That’s because instead of remembering the actual memory, you’re recalling the memory of the last time you remembered it and any mistakes that might have been introduced there. 00
Technically, you COULD stop a hurricane by shooting at it, if you had ~5000 machine guns firing constantly into the wind for 24 hours straight. So there you have it, folks: if you wanna kill a hurricane with bullets, all you need is 24 hours, a fortified brigade of heavy artillerymen, and $20 billion worth […]
300 million years ago insects could get really big. Millipedes and centipedes could get larger than humans, dragonflies as big as eagles, beatles the size of a large dog.The leading theory is that ancient bugs got big because they benefited from a surplus of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere. And the leading theory on why there […]
The US Air Force seriously considered and researched nuking the Moon as a show of force after Russia launched Sputnik, but scrapped it at the last minute as they felt landing on it would be better received by the public. 00
Le Bateau (“The Boat”) by Henri Matisse, caused a minor stir when the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which housed it, hung the work upside-down for 47 days in 1961 until Genevieve Habert, a stockbroker, noticed the mistake and notified a guard. 00
Japanese airline, All Nippon Airways in an effort to save costs asked passengers to visit the lavatory before boarding because empty bladders means less weight carried. 00