A 24-year-old knife-wielding burglar attempted to get into the home of a 72-year-old senior in Oxford, England, in 2009, but was left battered, bruised, and pinned to the ground. Frank Corti, the elderly, turned out to be a former boxing champion. […]
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Slavery was abolished in Mexico in 1829. Slaves were escaping to Mexico, and slaveholders in the US were aware of this. The US attempted to get Mexico to sign a fugitive slave treaty, which would have required Mexico to send back escaped slaves to the US. But, Mexico refused, arguing that slaves were free as soon as they set foot on Mexican soil. […]
Read More… from Underground Railroad to Mexico freed thousands of slaves in 1829
Henry Ford was the first Industrial Giant to give his employees both Saturday and Sunday off in the hope of encouraging more leisurely use of automobiles and thus popularizing the concept of the “weekend.” […]
Read More… from Henry Ford, The man popularizing the concept of the weekend off
Before women were allowed to enroll in medical school, Margaret Ann Bulkley studied medicine and assumed the identity of Dr. James Barry for 56 years while dressing as a man. After 46 years of service as an army doctor officer, her secret was not made public until after her death in 1865. […]
There is an upside-down fig tree in Bacoli, Italy. No one is quite sure how the fig tree ended up there or how it survived, but year after year, it continues to grow downwards and bear figs. […]
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William James Sidis, who was only 11 years old when he enrolled in Hardvard, finished his primary and secondary schooling in less than a year. He knew eight foreign languages by the age of eight and even invented his own language, “vedergood.” […]
Read More… from William James Sidis: The smartest person yet forgotten by people
These are the mugshots of Will West and William West, and they are not related. They were both sent to Leavenworth Prison at the same time, in 1903, and after some confusion, the staff understood they had two different prisoners with the nearly same name, who looked exactly alike. They are part of the reason fingerprints are now used as identification. […]
Russian scientist injected himself with a 3.5 million-year-old strain of bacteria, just to see what would happen. According to Brouchkov, Bacillus F has a mechanism that has enabled it to survive for so long beneath the ice, and that the same mechanism could be used to extend human life, too. […]
In 1975, when officials in the Chinese city of Haicheng were alarmed by odd and anxious behaviors of dogs and other animals. These observations led them to order 90,000 residents to evacuate the city. Only a few hours later a 7.3 magnitude earthquake destroyed nearly 90% of the city’s buildings. […]
Read More… from Earthquakes: Can Animals Really Predict Them?
In 2013, A young programmer offered a homeless man the choice between $100 cash or coding lessons. Leo Grand chose the lessons, and his first mobile app was “Trees for Cars,” which helps drivers find carpooling partners. […]
Read More… from Leo Grand: from homeless to mobile app developer
