In the 1880s, the Harvard Observatory director was frustrated with his staff, and would say “My Scottish maid could do better!” So, he hired his Scottish maid. Williamina Fleming ran a team for decades, classified tens of thousands of stars, & discovered white dwarfs and the Horsehead Nebula.
Hemingway Cats
Ernest Hemmingway was gifted a 6-toed cat named Snow White. Snow White’s 40-50 descendants still live at his Florida home. Over half of them also have 6 toes. Which is why polydactyls are often known as Hemingway Cats.
Until the mid-1960s in Britain…
Until the mid-1960s in Britain, pregnancy tests were done by sending a woman’s urine to a lab, where it would be injected into a toad. The toad was checked two hours later and if it had laid eggs, the woman was pregnant.
In 2018, the world’s most expensive…
In 2018, the world’s most expensive bottle of vodka (worth $1.3 million USD) was stolen and found empty on a construction site.
In 1948, a man wore 30-pound…
In 1948, a man wore 30-pound, 3-toed lead shoes and stomped around a Florida beach in the night. The footprints lead people to believe that a 15-foot tall penguin was roaming their lands. He kept up the prank for 10 years, visiting various beaches. The hoax wasn’t revealed until 40 years later.
A New York woman is suing…
A New York woman is suing TGI Fridays because their potato skins contain no potato skin.
There is a font called Sans Forgetica…
There is a font called Sans Forgetica which helps the reader remember the text they read due to the difficulty in reading it, making the brain remember it as it used up more resources.
Hedonic adaptation is the tendency for…
Hedonic adaptation is the tendency for people to return to a baseline happiness level regardless of what happens to them. A study conducted on lottery winners and paraplegics concluded that neither group was either happier or sadder less than 6 months after the event.
OK Soda
In 1993, Coca-Cola created a soda for the dystopian future, called OK Soda, which came with its own manifesto, and the slogan, “Everything is going to be OK.”
Melania Trump secured a ‘genius visa’…
Melania Trump secured a ‘genius visa’ for ‘extraordinary ability’ while dating Donald Trump.