Nike had conditions before giving rookie Michael Jordan a record contract: Either be rookie of the year, or average 20 ppg, or be an all star, or sell $4 mill worth shoes in a year. Jordan was rookie of the year, scored 28.2 ppg, named all star, and Nike sold $100 mill of shoes in 1984-85
Shortly after returning from the moon Buzz Aldrin began to suffer from alcoholism and depression. “I wanted to resume my duties, but there were no duties to resume. There was no goal, no sense of calling, no project worth pouring myself into."
Buzz Aldrin Punched This Guy in the Face for Saying the Moon Landing Was Fake
The final science exam for 8th grade students in Ketchikan Alaska is a 2 night survival trip on an uninhabited island.
Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman who began taping whatever was on television in 1979 and didn’t stop until her death in 2012.. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV. They are being digitized by the Internet Archive.
After visiting a prison in Norway that treated prisoners humanely, a warden from North Dakota went back and reformed her prison based on Norway’s model. It later saw sharp decline in violence against inmates and threats against staff
In 1959 a white man from Texas disguised himself as a black man and traveled for six weeks on greyhound buses. After publishing his experiences with racism he was forced to move to Mexico for several years due to death threats
When Charlie Sheen came out as HIV positive, it led to a 95 percent increase in over the counter HIV home testing kits and 2.75 million searches on the topic, dubbed “The Charlie Sheen Effect.” Some said that Sheen did more for awareness of HIV than most UN events
Schizophrenia’s hallucinations are shaped by culture. Americans with schizophrenia tend to have more paranoid and harsher voices/hallucinations. In India and Africa people with schizophrenia tend to have more playful and positive voices
Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 was created by only 9 people…. and 8 of them had never once worked on a video game before
Roller Coaster Tycoon was coded by one person in x86 Assembly language
The US Military still uses 8 inch floppy disks on outdated IBM computers to run the nuclear missile systems. It’s because they are incredibly hard to hack. The computers are essentially air-gapped and the old IBM computers are reliable. They could run for another 40 years with spare parts.
George Clooney once gave 14 of his closest friends each $1M in cash, and even paid the taxes on it for them – with one condition: they all had to take it or none of them got it.
All of these people had helped him out while he was struggling as an actor. He crashed on their couches, some paid his rent for a month or two, and other cover car payments or helped him out financially with what very little they had. Richard Kind who is one of his best friends let him live rent free in his apartment for a while because he wasn’t getting steady work. Richard was a lead actor on spin city and really helped him out.
Smoking scorpions to get high is a growing problem in south Asia. The high can last from 10 hours to 3 days. The high is said to be so powerful that it outstrips heroin. But the person spends the first six hours in pain while their body adjusts to the toxins, which can possibly lead to death
For a cost of 70 to 200 rupees, or $1 to $3 in U.S. currency, a dealer will place a scorpion in a person’s hand and bat it with a stick until it imparts venom with its tail. Others opt to smoke the scorpion, which involves burning it alive over coals while inhaling the venomous smoke. Still others will dry a dead scorpion in sunlight, mix its remains with hashish and tobacco, and either roll it like a cigarette or place it in a small pipe.
Ants have designated paramedics that are assigned to rescue their wounded soldiers, carry them back to their nest and help them heal by gently holding the hurt limb in place with their mandibles and front legs while intensely “licking” the wound for up to 4 minutes
Bonus fact: if an ant knows it is mortally wounded, it will flail wildly to signal to other ants that it is not worth saving and spending time and resources on it would be a waste
The Australian town of Cooper Pedy. 80% of the residents live underground to avoid the incredible heat above ground
From 1994 until 2017m Mariah Carey “All I want for Christmas” was reported to have earned $60M in royalties. That’s roughly $2.6M/year
Pokémon is the highest grossing media franchise of all time with $95 billion, beating out other franchises such as Star Wars, Marvel and Mickey Mouse
Trader Joe’s hides a stuffed animal in a majority of their stores and if your child finds it they get a prize
So many American Indians joined the military during WW2 that had all Americans joined at the same proportion, conscription would not have been necessary. The Blackfeet tribe mocked the idea of a draft: “Since when has it been necessary for Blackfeet to draw lots to fight?”
The Iroquois Confederacy, having declared war on Germany in 1917, had never made peace and so automatically became party to World War II. The Navajo and other tribes were so eager to go to war that they stood for hours in bad weather to sign their draft cards, while others carried their own rifles so they would be ready for battle when they joined up. Unwilling to wait for their draft numbers, one-fourth of the Mescalero Apaches in New Mexico enlisted. Nearly all the able-bodied Chippewas at the Grand Portage Reservation enlisted. In a story that has been attributed to many other tribes as well, Blackfeet Indians mocked the need for a conscription bill. “Since when,” their members cried, “has it been necessary for Blackfeet to draw lots to fight?”
The annual enlistment for Native Americans jumped from 7,500 in the summer of 1942 to 22,000 at the beginning of 1945. According to the Selective Service in 1942, at least 99 percent of all eligible Indians, healthy males aged 21 to 44, had registered for the draft. War Department officials maintained that if the entire population had enlisted in the same proportion as Indians, the response would have rendered Selective Service unnecessary. … The Iroquois took it as an insult to be called up under compulsion. They passed their own draft act and sent their young braves into National Guard units.
A king penguin named Lala who was injured and nursed back to health in Japan, didn’t leave so the family adopted him and lived in a air-conditioned room. He walked around the neighborhood and got himself fishes from the store. He lived with the family for 10 years before dying of old age in 1996.
Hajimi Fuji, who volunteered for the kamikaze but was refused acceptance because he had a wife and two young children. To honour his wish his wife drowned her two young girls and drowned herself. Hajimi then flew as a kamikaze pilot, meeting his death on the 28th May 1945.
Gino Bartali, a cyclist who used his fame as a winner of the Tour de France to smuggle counterfeit documents hidden inside his bicycle through Nazi checkpoints in WWII Italy under the guise of training. These documents allowed as many as 800 Jews to escape persecution by the Nazis.
The part he played went largely unknown until after the death of an Italian Resistance leader in 2000. When going through his diaries, Bartali’s work was revealed. Until that point, only his son had known what he did during the war.
His son: “When I asked my father why I couldn’t tell anyone, he said, ‘You must do good, but you must not talk about it. If you talk about it you’re taking advantage of others misfortunes’ for your own gain.”
Bartali also gave refuge to the family of a Jewish friend during the war, hiding them in his house.
Ponso, a roughly 40-year-old chimp, who was dumped on an abandoned island off the Ivory Coast more than 30 years ago after being used for medical testing. He relies on the kindness of a nearby villager, Germain, who’s dropped off bananas and bread for him ever since he was left to die
An article in 1968 revealed widespread marijuana use among US soldiers in Vietnam. As a result of the media uproar stateside and subsequent crackdown by the army, soldiers shifted to heroin, which was odorless and harder to detect. By 1973, up to 20% of the soldiers were habitual heroin users.
An Italian pronstar, who was a member of Parliament, while continuing to make hardcore pron videos while in office. She often made speeches with one breast exposed, and offered to have sex with Saddam Hussein in exchange for peace in the region
In 1979, Ilona Staller was presented as a candidate to the Italian parliament by the Lista del Sole, Italy’s first Green party. In 1985, she switched to the Partito Radicale, campaigning on a libertarian platform against nuclear energy and NATO membership, as well as for human rights. She was elected to the Italian parliament in 1987, with approximately 20,000 votes. While in office, and before the outset of the Gulf War, she offered to have sex with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in return for peace in the region. She was not re-elected at the end of her term in 1991.
Nepal Airlines has the worst safety record in the world, and has sacrificed goats in order to fix technical problems
“In September 2007, the airline confirmed that it had sacrificed two goats to appease a Hindu god following technical problems with one of its aircraft. Nepal Airlines said the animals were slaughtered in front of the plane, a Boeing 757, at Tribhuvan International Airport. The offering was made to Akash Bhairab, the Hindu god of sky protection, whose symbol is seen on the company’s aircraft. The airline said that after Sunday’s ceremony, the plane successfully completed a flight to Hong Kong. Raju KC, an airline official, was quoted as saying: “The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights.” The company did not say what the problem was, but reports in local media had blamed an electrical fault”
Serial killer Javed Iqbal was sentenced to death by being strangled in front of his victims family’s, dismembered and then burned in a vat of acid, in the same way he killed over 100 16 year old boys. He was found dead in his cell before the execution could be carried out.
He was only caught because he sent a confession letter to the police in which he gave his address and left the remains of 2 victims in his house.
A placard in his home read: “All details of the murders are contained in the diary and the 32-page notebook that have been placed in the room and had also been sent to the authorities. This is my confessional statement.” Another placard read: “The bodies in the house have deliberately not been disposed of so that the authorities will find them after my suicide.”
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