"While visiting New York City in 1931, Winston Churchill was hit by a car while leaving a taxi, as he looked right, but not left, for cars, as he was used to English roads."
"Steven Spielberg initially negotiated with Warner Bros to direct “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone”. If he would have had his way, it would have been an animated movie with American actor Haley Joel Osment (The 6th Sense) as the voice of Harry. "
"The deadliest earthquake in recorded history struck Shensi province in China in 1556, killing about 830,000 people. "
"A Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa, was dropped from delivering a speech on “what the food industry could do to improve public health” because he exposed the deceptive marketing used by top brands. "
"Some zoos take donated Christmas trees and use them to feed their animals. "
"In 1890’s, George Stratton, an American psychologist, wore inverted lenses to prove that brain adapts, and by the fifth day his brain started turning all the images upside down, so he would see the world normally."
"The Horror Frog, which lives in Central Africa, when threatened, breaks the bones in its toes and forces the ends through its skin to create claws for fighting."
"Some Native American tribes intentionally bent trees to mark trails and many of those trees still remain today as hidden monuments. "
"For Mount Everest to form a black hole, it would need to be shrunk to smaller than a nanometer but keeping the same mass."
"Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was in space when the Soviet Union was dissolved. He went up a Soviet citizen and returned a Russian citizen."
"There is a mineral called “Cummingtonite” named after its place of discovery: Cummington, Massachusetts "
"Every NYC subway station has a wooden black and white striped “Zebra Board” that conductors must point at every stop to show they are alert and stopped in the proper spot."
"A hippo sleeping underwater automatically rises to the surface and breathes without waking up and does this every ~4 minutes. "
"Jack Abernathy was known as “Catch-em-alive Jack” because he would catch wolves by jumping off a horse, shoving his hand in the wolf’s mouth so it was unable to bite down, and holding it down until it became docile. He performed this trick for Teddy Roosevelt during a hunt in Oklahoma in 1905. "
"Tenochtitlan was possibly the highest populated city in the world before its fall, with 5 miles of aqueducts, a ten mile levee, and one of the most complicated class systems in the world at the time. Cortés of Spain leveled the entire city in 75 days."
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