Strange But True Events In History (economy, Miami, bomb, England)
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Katherine Hepburn only drank water throughout the African Queen production as a protest against John Huston and Humphrey Bogart's alcoholism. However, most of the cast and crew became sick from drinking the water and only Bogart and Huston were unaffected because they only drank whiskey.
Commercial flights were allowed to fly any course to their destination and would often detour over points of interest. This ended in 1956 when two planes collided with each other over the Grand Canyon.
The Habsburg Jaw
Years of inbreeding produced a freakish snowplow looking chin on some of the Royal Families. I guess it came in handy for scooping up mashed potatoes off their plates. The artists that painted their portraits made sure they did a complimentary job by making those features smaller or they probably would have been beheaded.
An Illinois man sued Pepsi in 2009 claiming he found a dead mouse in his can of Mountain Dew. Pepsi's attorneys claim that Mountain Dew would have dissolved the mouse in the can long before the man purchased it.
Blockbuster Video closed their remaining stores in January of 2014. The last movie rented at a Blockbuster store was "This Is The End" at a store in Hawaii.
Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.
The largest recorded snowflake fell in Keogh, Montana, in 1887.
The first comic book, The Comick Magazine, was published in London in 1796.
The inventor of the Slinky, Richard T James, suffered a breakdown and moved to Bolivia to join a religious cult, leaving his wife Betty in charge of the company.
Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951)
She has been dead for over 60 years but her cells are immortal.
There are over 20 tons of them now and they are being bought and sold by the billions all over the world, yet her family cannot afford health insurance. She has a planet named after her.
The earliest known safe was from the 13th Century BC. It was found in the tomb of Pharaoh Ramesses II and was made of wood with a locking system similar to ones currently used for pin tumbler locks. It was built with movable pins that dropped into holes to lock the safe.
I bet they couldn't wait to crack it after they broke into his tomb.
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman in America to receive an M.D. She was admitted to medical school in 1847.
The parachute was invented 120 years before the airplane.
The Pillow Gang
They were called that because their leader had once been shot in the butt and carried a pillow around with him so he could have something soft to sit on.
Lucas Miltiades Miller (1824-1902)
He was a 4 year old orphan in Greece when he was adopted by an American Colonel in the Greek Army during the Greek Revolution. He was brought to the United States where he studied law and opened a law practice in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1846.
He was a colonel in the Mexican-American War and then got into politics serving as a U.S. Representative. While serving in Congress, he proposed a Constitutional amendment to change the country's name to " the United States of the Earth." He also wanted to abolish the army and the navy. He didn't last long in politics.
Elijah Bond's Ouija Board Grave
His grave was not easy to find
In October of 1852, a drunken London zookeeper died after being bitten 5 times on the nose by a cobra. His head doubled in size and his face turned black. He had just started working at the zoo and had no experience with venomous snakes.
Pluto was made and unmade a planet before it completed one orbit of the sun.
In 1943, the temperature in Spearfish, South Dakota, jumped 49 degrees in two minutes, -4 to 49
Yuengling is the oldest brewery in the United States. It was founded by a German immigrant in Pottsville, Pennsylvania and has been operating out of the same building since 1831.
Cave lions died out in the UK around 12 to 14,000 years ago.
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