I Know I'll Never Be Forgetting These 84 Truly Fascinating Things I Learned In February For As Long As I Live - Xuenou

I Know I’ll Never Be Forgetting These 84 Truly Fascinating Things I Learned In February For As Long As I Live

I Know I'll Never Be Forgetting These 84 Truly Fascinating Things I Learned In February For As Long As I Live,I learned some pretty unforgettable things in February, from the heartbreaking stories of real-life couples who died on the <i>Titanic</i> to details about several alleged assassination attempts against Queen Elizabeth II.

I Know I’ll Never Be Forgetting These 84 Truly Fascinating Things I Learned In February For As Long As I Live

You could say that fun facts are my thing. Whether it’s a deep pe into the history of a classic song, a scandal that happened up in space, or a factoid about a president that I wish would have been taught in history class, I can’t get enough.

Peacock / Via giphy.com

I’m so into fun facts that I write a weekly post full of the best things I’ve learned each week. At the end of the month, I compile ’em all into one big post for your reading pleasure.

That means there’s a chance that you’ve seen some of these facts in previous BuzzFeed posts. I’ve linked the weekly posts below in case you’d prefer to read them that way!

February 7, 2023

February 14, 2023

February 21, 2023

February 28, 2023

So, without further ado, here are 84 truly fascinating things I learned in February 2023:

1. While I had always known Cleopatra was wealthy, I didn’t realize she was this wealthy! Cleopatra controlled many of Egypt’s key industries in her role as pharaoh and was estimated to have a net worth of $95.8 billion in today’s money. Although Cleopatra was known for her wealth, she reportedly borrowed heavily from foreign governments to fund wars. And she wasn’t the only woman to have extreme wealth! Russia’s Catherine the Great, Egypt’s Hatshepsut, and China’s Empress Wu were also among history’s richest women.

2. Titanic fans might recall the scene in which an elderly first-class couple embraces on their bed as water rushes into their stateroom. That couple was based on Macy’s department store co-owner and former Congressman Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida. According to the couple’s great-grandson, Paul Kurzman, they decided to die together on the ship instead of risking being separated. “My great-grandmother Ida stepped into the lifeboat expecting that her husband would follow,” Kurzman told Today. “When he didn’t follow, she was very concerned and the ship’s officer in charge of lowering that particular lifeboat said, ‘Well, Mr. Straus, you’re an elderly man…and we all know who you are… course, you can enter the lifeboat with your wife.'”

“My great-grandfather said, ‘No. Until I see that every woman and child on board this ship is in a lifeboat, I will not enter into a lifeboat myself,'” Kurzman recalled. After learning that Isidor wasn’t getting on the lifeboat, Ida reportedly stepped out and headed back to her stateroom with her husband. While the shot featuring the couple’s embrace made it into the film’s final cut, they also appeared in one of the movie’s deleted scenes, during which Ida tells Isidor, “Where you go, I go.” Kurzman also shared that his family was able to recover a locket from Isidor’s pocket after the ship sank, and revealed that Ida allegedly gave her fur coat to her maid, Ellen Bird, to keep her warm as she got on a lifeboat to escape the sinking ship. Bird survived and reportedly later tried to return the coat to the family, who insisted that she keep it.

4. In the wake of Tom Brady’s recent news that he’s retiring from the NFL (he claims it’s for good this time!), I’m even more intrigued by 80 for Brady. The movie is inspired by a group of real-life eighty-somethings who band together over their love for Tom Brady and the New England Patriots and go on an adventure to see Brady play in Super Bowl LI. Elaine St. Martin and Betty Pensavalle gathered three of their close friends (and fellow football fanatics), Anita, Pat, and Claire, to watch the Patriots game at each others’ houses every Sunday. “One Sunday here, one Sunday at my house, and it would go right to the five of us,” St. Martin told CBS News Sunday Morning.

Although the women were good friends before, they said their friendships became even closer after they all became widows, with CBS News reporting that “game days became the link that kept their friendship from fumbling.” While the group originally united over their love of the Patriots, they became major Brady fans after he took over for injured Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe in 2001. “I loved watching Tom from the beginning,” St. Martin told Time. “Even when the Patriots were behind, we never lost hope. We knew he could pull out a miracle, as he did in many games, especially the Super Bowl against the Atlanta Falcons.” In 2006, the club earned the nickname the “Over 80 for Brady Club” after Pensavalle’s grandson designed them T-shirts with the moniker.

So, how did the story make it to the big screen? Pensavalle said her grandson, talent agent Max Gross, thought it would make for a cute movie, and decided to pitch it. In 2020, Tom Brady sent Pensavalle a personalized video message, telling her that he wanted to turn the group’s story into a film. In addition to producing the movie, Brady makes a cameo alongside his fellow former Patriots Rob Gronkowski, Danny Amendola, and Julian Edelman. Although the club never made it to a Super Bowl to see Brady and the Patriots in action, as portrayed in the movie, the surviving members are still hopeful they’ll get to meet the quarterback. “I hope we see him before we die!” St. Martin joked to CBS News.

Andrew Putler / Redferns, Graham Wiltshire / Getty Images

Parton’s version of “I Will Always Love You” ultimately went No. 1 on the charts twice, once in June 1974, and again in October 1982, making Parton the first artist to reach No. 1 twice with the same song. In 1992, Whitney Houston recorded her own version of the song as the centerpiece for The Bodyguard. Houston’s version spent 14 weeks at No. 1 and remains the best-selling single by a female artist in history. After Houston died in 2012, the song once again re-entered the charts, making it the second song to ever reach the Top 3 in two separate chart runs. Houston’s version of the song made Parton an estimated $10 million in royalties, which she used to revitalize a Black neighborhood in Nashville to honor Houston.

8. On December 4, 1875, former congressman and New York political boss William “Boss” Tweed escaped from prison and fled to Cuba. Tweed, a former bookkeeper and volunteer fireman, was elected alderman in New York City in 1851. Soon, he was elected to Congress, where he served “one lackluster term,” before returning to New York politics. By 1870, Tweed had become incredibly influential in New York and ran Tammany Hall, the organization that controlled Democratic nominations in New York. In 1873, Tweed was found guilty of embezzling millions from the government and was sentenced to prison. It’s estimated that Tweed and his partners stole between $30 million and $200 million from the city.

Tweed was arrested after a campaign run by influential people like George Jones, the publisher of the New York Times, Samuel J. Tilden, a reform leader, and Thomas Nast, who drew politically charged cartoons of Tweed, worked to expose his wrongdoing. In an attempt to get the accusations to go away, Tweed allegedly tried to bribe Jones and Nast. Tweed was sentenced to 12 years in prison, where he reportedly lived pretty lavishly and had a velvet sofa in his cell. Despite the 12-year sentence, Tweed was released from prison after a year, although he was rearrested soon after, and sent to debtor’s prison.

During his second sentence, he was allowed to leave Ludlow Jail for supervised visits with his family. Although the visits were supervised, Tweed was able to escape during one of them. He fled to Cuba, then sailed on to Spain. He was eventually rearrested in Spain and sent back to jail, where he remained for the rest of his life. Before his death in 1878, Tweed allegedly told authorities, “My imprisonment will have a moral effect.” Tammany Hall lived on through the 1930s, when it was eventually taken down by a huge investigation led by then-governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt that exposed the level of corruption and ties to the mob in New York’s government.

9. In 2006, David Austin, a rose breeder, sold the world’s most expensive rose for a whopping $15.8 million. Austin spent 15 years and $5 million breeding the exclusive rose variety, which he called the Juliet. The rose made its debut at the Chelsea Flower Show, where it won 25 gold medals.

10. Seinfeld has gone down in TV history as being one of the greatest sitcoms of all time. When the show aired its finale in 1998, it made headlines for both the controversial plot line and for the sheer amount of people who tuned in. Frank Sinatra was rushed to the hospital during the episode and reportedly made it there in record time because there was no traffic because so many people were inside watching the finale. In fact, Sinatra’s daughter, Nancy, reportedly missed her chance to say goodbye to her father because she was home watching the episode.

Other networks even decided to honor the NBC sitcom. During the episode, TV Land aired a screen reading “We’re TV fans, so… We’re watching the last episode of Seinfeld.” In the final shot of the four main characters together, they’re in a jail cell discussing the buttons on George’s shirt. This is a callback to the first scene from the pilot, during which they also talked about George’s buttons. Filming for the final episode was intense: only the script supervisor was given a full copy of the script and had to ensure the actors and crew members would give their pages back at the end of every shoot so they could be shredded. Members of the live studio audience had to sign affidavits promising they wouldn’t reveal any of the plot points for the series finale.

11. Wedding cakes originated in Ancient Rome, where the cake, which was closer to bread, was reportedly broken up and crumbled over the bride’s head for luck and fertility. The newly wedded couple would then eat some of the crumbs, while guests would eat the remaining scraps. In Britain, this tradition evolved into throwing the cake at the bride to wish her luck with her fertility. By the medieval period, this tradition has disappeared, as cakes became less bread-like and more along the lines of the sweet treats that they are today.

Netflix / Via giphy.com

12. In 1973, former president Jimmy Carter, who was governor of Georgia at the time, reported seeing a UFO in Leary, Georgia in 1969. Carter claimed that he was at an event at the Lions Club when he and several others spotted a luminous object that remained visible for about 10 minutes. “[We were] standing outside of a little restaurant, I believe, a high school lunchroom, and a kind of green light appeared in the western sky,” Carter said. “This was right after sundown. It got brighter and brighter. And then, it eventually disappeared. It didn’t have any solid substance to it, it was just a very peculiar looking light. None of us could understand what it was.”

Some people believed that Carter had actually spotted Venus, although he said he was certain it wasn’t. Although some thought Carter was alluding to the UFO being an alien spacecraft, Carter insisted that it wasn’t, citing his knowledge of physics from his time in the US Navy’s nuclear submarine program. In 1976, during Carter’s presidential campaign, he promised to convince the government to make all information about UFOs public. Despite his campaign promise, once elected president, Carter was unable to release the information because it allegedly posed a national security threat.

13. A new season of The Bachelor is upon us! During every episode, I find myself wondering what exactly the contestants do all day when they’re not invited on the dates, as books, TV shows, and other media are largely prohibited while filming. According to one former contestant, the only book contestants were allowed to bring was the Bible. “Bible studies were held during my season,” Tierra LiCausi revealed. “The girls would have weekly gatherings to study the Bible or discuss their beliefs [and their] religion (which was very interesting and unique to see).” In recent years, the rules have allegedly loosened up, and contestants are now reportedly allowed to bring other books.

14. Queen Elizabeth II survived multiple assassination attempts during her reign as queen. The first known attempt occurred in April 1970, when Elizabeth and Prince Philip were traveling through Australia by train. The train reportedly struck a log, but the conductor was able to slam on the brakes just in time. It was believed that the log had been purposely placed on the track in an attempt to send the train off the tracks and into a nearby embankment, as the tracks had been checked for debris about an hour before in anticipation of their train. The incident was kept secret for decades until a retired detective spoke out about it in 2009.

The queen survived two more potential assassination attempts in 1981. Seventeen-year-old Marcus Sarjeant fired six blank shots at Elizabeth during the Trooping of the Color ceremony on June 13, 1981. She was riding a horse at the time, and reportedly remained incredibly calm. Sarjeant was sentenced to five years in prison under the Treason Act, which hadn’t been used since 1966. Just four months later, the queen and Philip were visiting New Zealand when Christopher John Lewis, a 17-year-old hiding in a bathroom stall, attempted to shoot the couple as they got out of their car. Lewis missed, and allegedly later attempted to escape from an institution to assassinate Prince Charles.

Finally, in 1982, Michael Fagan reportedly scaled a drainpipe outside of Buckingham Palace and entered Elizabeth’s bedroom. Before reaching her bedroom, Fagan allegedly smashed a glass ashtray, and was planning on using a shard of glass to harm himself in front of the queen. The Times reported that Fagan “claimed that he had not entered the palace with this intention but that it formed in his mind for the first time when he saw the ashtray.” Fagan was able to reach the sleeping queen, who was able to stall him until her security could subdue Fagan. Fagan claimed that it was actually the second time in just a month that he had snuck into the queen’s bedroom.

15. After the Grammys, I was curious to see what household names never won a single award at the prestigious ceremony, and I’ve gotta say, I was pretty dang surprised by these. Diana Ross, Bob Marley, Queen, Snoop Dogg (who is tied for the most nominations with zero wins), ABBA, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, the Beach Boys, the Who, Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G., and the Ramones are some of the most notable artists and groups who, despite their huge impacts on the music world, have never won a Grammy. Several of these artists were later acknowledged with lifetime achievement awards by the Recording Academy.

16. Although The Great Gatsby is now arguably one of the most popular books in the world, it wasn’t quite so successful when it debuted in 1925. F. Scott Fitzgerald had been used to literary acclaim, following the success of his previous bestsellers, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned. Upon release, The Great Gatsby only sold about 20,000 copies and was poorly reviewed. After the negative reception of what Fitzgerald believed was “the best American novel ever written,” he struggled financially and ended up publishing just one last novel before his death in 1940.

Gatsby’s legacy didn’t look promising until a wartime effort in 1943 propelled the book back onto shelves. The Council of Books in Wartime, a group of book lovers who wanted to promote books that could boost morale during World War II, decided to send soldiers overseas books. This program came just as paperback production began to gain steam, and became incredibly popular with soldiers. “Some toughies in my company have admitted without shame that they were reading their first book since they were in grammar school,” an Army official wrote in a letter. Soon, over 150,000 copies of Gatsby were printed and distributed, with an estimated one million soldiers reading the novel. By the 1960s, The Great Gatsby had become a staple in school curriculums, and Fitzgerald’s legacy was restored.

17. While Walt Disney’s cinematic achievements are evident, he also did us all a favor by inventing the modern public trash can. He reportedly was one of the people who decided the trash cans at Disneyland should have swinging lids in order to keep unpleasant smells at bay for parkgoers. The design also ensured that visitors wouldn’t get an eyeful of disgusting trash by having to lift the lid. Now, Disney parks have a rule that visitors won’t have to walk more than 30 steps before finding a trash can. Disney allegedly came up with this rule after personally walking through the park and determining that people would be willing to walk a maximum of 30 steps with a piece of trash in their hand before they would be enticed to throw it on the ground.

18. The first woman dubbed First Lady was actually not the wife of a US president, but his niece! Harriet Lane, the niece of James Buchanan, is believed to be the first woman referred to using the title of First Lady. Buchanan was a lifelong bachelor who took over care of Lane after she was orphaned when she was 11 years old. Lane began to run in “fashionable circles” after moving in with Buchanan, who was the Secretary of State at the time. In 1854, Lane moved to London with Buchanan, where he was minister to the Court of St. James. Queen Victoria gave her the rank of an ambassador’s wife, which would continue on into Lane’s time in the White House, where she became incredibly popular and proved to be skilled when it came to hosting events.

In 1860, Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly described Lane as “The Lady of the White House, and by courtesy, the First Lady of the Land.” By the 1870s, the term was widely used. Although most signs point to Lane being the first woman to be called First Lady, there is a bit of discrepancy in the matter. According to some historians, Andrew Jackson referred to Dolley Madison, wife of James Madison, as First Lady when delivering her eulogy in 1849. Others believe that the First Lady label was truly popularized in coverage of Lucy Webb Hayes, the wife of Rutherford B. Hayes.

19. In the 1960s, the Beatles attempted to obtain the film rights to The Lord of the Rings. The band reportedly wanted Stanley Kubrick to direct the movie and planned on John Lennon playing Gollum, while Paul McCartney hoped to play Frodo. Their plans never came to fruition because J.R.R. Tolkien refused to give the band the rights to adapt his novel. Director Peter Jackson, who went on to direct the Lord of the Rings films, in addition to a documentary about the Beatles, allegedly knew about the band’s plan from the get-go. “It was something John was driving, and J.R.R. Tolkien still had the film rights at that stage, but he didn’t like the idea of the Beatles doing it. So, he killed it,” Jackson said in 2002. “There probably would’ve been some good songs coming off the album.”

20. Ohio boasts the highest number of NASA astronauts — 25 of the organization’s past and present astronauts are from the state. Some attribute this phenomenon to the fact that Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut on the moon, and John Glenn, the first astronaut to orbit the Earth, were both from Ohio, while others think the high number of astronauts hailing from Ohio has something to do with the state being the birthplace of the Wright brothers.

21. Charity Adams Earley paved the way for Black women in the military by leading the first unit of Black women overseas during World War II. Earley grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, where she tested into high school early. After graduating at the top of her class, Earley received a scholarship to Wilberforce University in Ohio, which at the time was one of the most prestigious universities for Black students. Earley then became a teacher and took graduate courses at Ohio State University during the summers.

In 1942, the US military developed the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, later known as the Women’s Army Corps. After learning about the new group, Earley applied for a position. She traveled to Iowa for training as a member of the first officer candidate school. She remained at Fort Des Moines until 1944. During her time there, she became a major, making her the highest-ranking female officer at the training center. She was then selected to lead the first unit of Black women in the WAC, who were sent overseas to organize and mail for US servicemen.

The unit started in Birmingham, England, where they sorted backlogged mail for three months before being moved to France, where they handled an estimated 65,000 pieces of mail a day. In December 1945, Earley was promoted to lieutenant colonel, the highest possible promotion for women in the WAC. The next year, Earley was discharged from active duty, and was given recognition by the National Council of Negro Women Inc. After leaving the military, Earley completed her graduate degree, worked for the Veterans Administration, and frequently gave speeches about her time in the military. Throughout the rest of her life, Earley was known for her community service. In 1982, she founded the Black Leadership Development Program, which helped Black people become community leaders.

22. While you might already know that Ben Affleck is a pretty big Boston Red Sox fan, did you know that his love for the team is so intense that it nearly caused an on-set shutdown? In 2015, director David Fincher asked Affleck to wear a Yankees cap on-screen while filming Gone Girl. According to Rolling Stone, Affleck refused, citing his love of the Red Sox. The dispute allegedly launched a “one-man riot” that lasted four days, and ended with Affleck sporting a New York Mets hat instead. Affleck confirmed the story to the New York Times, telling them that he refused to don the Yankees apparel because he knew he “would never hear the end of it” from his fellow Sox fans.

23. Princess Diana’s relationship with Prince Charles was pretty unconventional from the get-go. Diana and Charles actually went waaaaay back. Diana’s older sister, Sarah, dated Charles in 1977. The relationship didn’t last long. “There is no chance of my marrying him. I’m not in love with him,” she said in 1978. “And I wouldn’t marry anyone I didn’t love whether he were the dustman or the King of England.” Charles and Diana were introduced by Sarah at a party in 1977. “I remember thinking what a very jolly and amusing and attractive 16-year-old she was,” he said in 1981. “I mean, great fun, and bouncy and full of life and everything.”

After that initial meeting, Charles and Diana didn’t see each other again until 1980, when they both were invited to stay at a mutual friend’s house. According to Diana, Charles was going through it emotionally after a recent breakup and the death of a close friend. “He leapt upon me and started kissing me, and I thought, urgh, this is not what people do,” she said. “And he was all over me for the rest of the evening, following me around like a puppy.” Despite Diana’s mixed reaction to Charles, the pair started dating soon after. They reportedly only met in person 13 times before Charles proposed.

24. Pooping can be life-threatening for a sloth. Sloths have an incredibly slow metabolism — it can take them up to a month to digest a meal. As a result, sloths typically only poop once or twice a month, with their bowel movements clocking in at roughly a third of their body weight. Their bathroom routines are sometimes deadly. Three-toed sloths normally do their business on the ground instead of from the trees where they spend the majority of their time. Sloths have very little muscle mass, and often struggle to support their weight while crawling on the ground, making them incredibly easy targets for predators.

25. On February 14, 1929, a group of unarmed Chicago mobsters were killed in what has since been dubbed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The George “Bugs” Moran gang controlled most of the bootlegging on Chicago’s North Side, and also ran several casinos and brothels. That morning, several of the gang members traveled to a garage that the gang typically used for storage, likely to complete a job. Around 10:30 a.m., a car with several men, including two in police uniforms, pulled up to the garage and found the seven mobsters inside. Although the gang members were likely all armed, eyewitness accounts claim that none of them pulled their weapons when the intruders arrived in the garage, perhaps because of the police uniforms.

The intruders raised their weapons, instructed the mobsters to get away from the windows and doors, and immediately began firing. Six of the men were killed instantly, with the seventh, Frank Gusenberg, severely injured after being shot 14 times. When police arrived at the crime scene, Gusenberg allegedly refused to talk to the cops, although some reports say that he eventually muttered, “Cops did it.” Gusenberg was taken to the hospital, where he died shortly after. Soon, the attention turned to figuring out who was responsible, with many pointing fingers at Al Capone and his gang. At the time of the massacre, Capone was at a Florida courthouse, where he was being interviewed about his potential involvement in the murder of Capone’s former mentor.

As news about the murders began to spread, Capone reportedly felt incredibly confident that he wouldn’t be accused, given his alibi. Some thought the police truly were behind the crimes, while others pointed fingers at Detroit’s Purple Gang, who were allegedly seeking payback after one of their whiskey trucks had been hijacked. Authorities also investigated potential links between the murders and a recent election where Capone and Moran supported competing candidates. Moran was even considered a suspect at one point. Meanwhile, US attorney George E. Q. Johnson was looking to finally put Capone behind bars, even though he couldn’t find any direct evidence to indict the gangster. President Herbert Hoover was also desperate to arrest Capone to prove that he was serious about eliminating crime.

In December 1929, Fred “Killer” Burke was arrested for shooting a police officer. Ballistic evidence connected Burke’s gun to one used during the massacre. Burke refused to cooperate and died in prison in 1940 without ever answering any questions related to the killings. In January 1935, Bryan Bolton, a bank robber looking to shorten his prison sentence, told authorities that Capone was responsible for the murders. Bolton’s story had holes, but led to the reveal of a letter that claimed William “Three-Fingered Jack” White organized the massacre to get revenge for the death of his cousin. The cousin was the son of a police officer, thus explaining the men at the scene wearing police uniforms. The issue? White had been killed in 1934, so police couldn’t go after him for the crime. The case was closed, and Capone was eventually arrested on a charge of felony income-tax evasion.

26. After astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American man in space in 1961, Chevrolet gifted him a Corvette. Both General Motors and NASA were unsure about the gift: astronauts were not allowed to endorse products, and GM worried that it would set a precedent that they would have to give cars to all future astronauts. Instead, the company decided to develop a new program. Astronauts could lease up to two Chevrolets a year for the low price of $1. Six of the seven astronauts on the original Mercury mission ended up participating in the program, each leasing both a family car and a Corvette. Many of the Apollo astronauts later took advantage of the special offer as well.

27. I’m truly delighted every time a clip featuring Ina Garten, commonly known as the Barefoot Contessa, comes across my For You page on TikTok, so I decided to deep pe into the life of the culinary legend. Before becoming a beloved chef, Garten actually worked in the White House! In 1974, Garten got a job working in the Office of Management and Budget. She soon moved to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. By 1976, Garten was responsible for writing the organization’s budget. Garten’s White House tenure spanned both the Carter and Ford administrations.

Garten ultimately decided to leave politics at age 30 and started flipping houses with her husband, Jeffrey. In 1978, she opened a high-end grocery store in the Hamptons, which she called Barefoot Contessa. The move was risky because Garten had no prior food experience, and had only started cooking a few years before by using Julia Child’s recipes. “My job in Washington was intellectually exciting and stimulating, but it wasn’t me at all,” she told the New York Times in 1981. The store ended up doing so well that Garten was able to spin it off into a cookbook and TV show empire.

28. Conversation hearts have been a Valentine’s Day staple for over a century. The hearts were developed by the New England Confectionary Company, better known as Necco, in 1902. Necco co-founder Oliver Chase developed the technology to print words onto candy. The company now makes between 4.8–6.7 billion hearts each Valentine’s season. Although the hearts are in production for 11 months of the year, they’re only sold in a 6-week window between the New Year and Valentine’s Day.

29. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, so let’s reminisce on some of the best behind-the-scenes facts about the rom-com classic! Although I simply cannot imagine the movie without Kate Hudson, she actually wasn’t the first choice to star. Producers had originally tapped Gwyneth Paltrow to take on the role of Andie Anderson, but scheduling conflicts forced her to drop out. Hudson’s starring turn in Almost Famous ended up putting her on the producers’ radar. Hudson also advocated for Matthew McConaughey to star as the male lead, convincing producers that he was a better fit than the unnamed star they had originally selected.

Before filming started, Hudson reportedly spent a day shadowing Vogue editor Anna Wintour in order to play a magazine journalist. McConaughey and Hudson ad-libbed many of the movie’s most iconic moments, including the memorable scene where Hudson’s character crashes McConaughey’s boys’ night. When the movie was finally completed, it was screened for test audiences. While the filmmakers said they weren’t necessarily surprised by the rave reviews from female audiences, they were shocked by how much male viewers loved the movie. “Men of all ages gave it an 89 [out out 100],” director Donald Petrie said. “One of the things that I like the most about the outcome of this movie is it’s the ultimate chick flick for guys.”

30. The bleeding heart flower is believed to represent lost love and heartbreak. The plant gets its name from its droopy pink flowers, which are heart-shaped. Beneath the pink petals is typically a single white petal, which some say resembles a drop of blood.

31. Elvis Presley had a rather unique relationship with several US presidents. After all, his (honestly, very bizarre) meeting with Richard Nixon has gone on to be one of the most famous pictures of all time. In 2015, it was the most requested photo from the US National Archives, and the meeting has since spawned an entire movie. In 1970, Elvis decided he wanted a federal narcotics agent badge, because he believed it meant that he would be able to travel the world with whatever guns and drugs he wanted, no questions asked. Upon spontaneously arriving in Washington, DC, Presley called the White House and reportedly told Nixon, “I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a federal agent.”

The meeting began with Presley reportedly telling Nixon that the Beatles were responsible for an increase in anti-American sentiments. Presley went on to add that he had been closely studying communism and the rise in psychedelic drug culture in the United States to help him make his case for the badge. Despite not having any training or legitimate need to have the badge, Nixon granted the request but ended up giving Elvis a badge that had no actual power. To close out the trip, Elvis gifted Nixon a handgun from World War II that Presley had taken off the wall in his Los Angeles mansion before boarding his flight to the White House.

Nixon wasn’t the only president Elvis interacted with. Jimmy Carter told the New Yorker that he once got a rather interesting phone call from the singer. “When I was first elected President, I got a call from Elvis Presley,” Carter said. “He was totally stoned and didn’t know what he was saying. His sentences were almost incoherent.” Carter added that Presley was seeking a presidential pardon for a sheriff he was friends with who had gotten in some legal trouble. Presley allegedly continued to call Carter regarding the pardon for weeks, although Carter said he didn’t accept the calls. The phone call occurred in 1977, likely just weeks before Presley died.

32. Giraffes were actually originally known as camelopards. Legend has it that Julius Caesar brought the first giraffe to Europe, where many believed it looked like a cross between a camel and a leopard. The scientific name for the Northern giraffe species still references the camelopard moniker, and is known as Giraffa camelopardalis.

National Geographic / Via giphy.com

33. You know how sometimes those businesses that claim to be named after real people just use a fake name that sounds catchy? That’s not the case with Famous Amos cookies, which is named after Wally Amos, who was also the first Black talent agent at William Morris, one of the biggest agencies in the country. In 1975, Amos started the company using $25,000 he received from Marvin Gaye and Helen Reddy, who were clients of his. Amos famously would send his signature chocolate chip cookies to potential clients. “I’d go to meetings with record company or movie people and bring along some cookies, and pretty soon, everybody was asking for them,” Amos told the New York Times in 1975.

In the company’s first year, Amos sold over $300,000 worth of cookies, and by 1982, the company had made $12 million in revenue. Just a few years later, Amos, who was reportedly bad with money, lost control of the company. Although he remained onboard as a paid spokesperson, he left shortly after. “The first couple of years after I left Famous Amos, I didn’t even make cookies anymore, and I used to always make cookies at home,” he said. “I didn’t even want to talk about chocolate-chip cookies, really. I shaved my beard and stopped wearing hats,” he added, referring to the signature caricature on the brand’s packaging.

After Amos was ousted from the company, he tried to start a new cookie brand, which he called Wally Amos Presents. Famous Amos sued him for copyright infringement, so he changed the business name to Uncle Noname. In March 1999, he reached an agreement with Keebler, who had acquired the business several years earlier. They allowed him the use of the Amos name and extended him a two-year promotional contract. “He was happy to be back in the center of the brand he started, but he also had a hard time accepting the fact that at the end of the day, he was just a paid spokesperson,” his son revealed. Amos never stopped hustling in the cookie business, and even appeared on an episode of Shark Tank to pitch a company called The Cookie Kahuna.

34. After the Titanic wreckage was discovered in 1985, many started to wonder who technically could claim ownership of the boat. White Star Line, the original owner, had dissolved, and the paper trail for the ship’s insurance had become increasingly difficult to track over the years. There were also laws in place that complicated things by stating that ship wreckage found in international waters technically belongs to no one. Soon, an organization called RMS Titanic, Inc. was named the salvor-in-possession of the ship and faced several legal challenges from groups claiming they had true ownership. The organization rescued over 5,000 artifacts from the wreckage from 1987 to 2004, and must consistently display repeated salvage efforts in order to maintain ownership.

35. In 1981, Lionel Richie and Diana Ross collaborated on the song “Endless Love,” which served as the theme song for the film of the same name. The song went on to become the biggest duet in the history of the Billboard charts, but it wasn’t always intended to be a duet! Jon Peters, the film’s producer, and director Franco Zeffirelli originally asked Richie to compose an instrumental theme song for the movie. After all, Richie, who was still a member of the band the Commodores at the time, was fresh off of a slew of No. 1 hits, all of which were love songs. Richie was later asked if he could add lyrics to the instrumental track he composed.

Meanwhile, Diana Ross had just split from Motown after being offered $20 million to move to RCA, which was the largest recording contract in history at the time. Despite the split, Zeffirelli decided that Richie’s song needed a female counterpart, and tapped Ross for the job. RCA and Motown ended up working out an agreement, allowing Ross to record the track for her former label. Although the business logistics worked out quite nicely, Richie and Ross had some issues of their own. They both were incredibly busy, and ended up having to record the song at 3 a.m. at a recording studio in Reno after one of Ross’s concerts. The pair reportedly didn’t get along very well, and Richie was allegedly annoyed that his song was turned into a duet. Despite this, the song went on to become a massive hit.

In a strange turn of events, some of history’s most feared dictators tried their hand at romance novels, with both Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini publishing love stories. Hussein’s novel, Zabiba and the King, was published in 2000. In the book, a king, who is based on Hussein, falls in love with a villager. The CIA read the book to see if it contained any insight into Hussein’s views, and concluded that it was likely written by a ghostwriter with Hussein’s supervision. Meanwhile, Mussolini’s book, The Cardinal’s Mistress, was published in 1910. Mussolini actually wrote the book, which contains heavy criticism of the Catholic church, because he was in need of money before rising to political power.

37. In the 1960s, Joan Rivers frequently performed stand-up at bars and comedy clubs before becoming a late-night TV staple. She allegedly earned her big break on The Ed Sullivan Show by accident. Sullivan was reportedly supposed to announce that singer Johnny Rivers was slated to appear in a teaser for an upcoming episode, but he misspoke and said Joan Rivers instead. Rivers went on to appear on the show 20 more times after her initial 1966 appearance.

Rivers also frequently appeared on The Tonight Show during Johnny Carson’s tenure as host. She was eventually named a permanent guest host. Carson eventually banned Rivers in 1986 after she accepted a hosting job for Fox. The feud got so bad that Carson’s talent bookers allegedly told potential guests that they would be blackballed from appearing if they went on Rivers’s show. After her show was canceled after just one season, Rivers’s husband died by suicide. Carson allegedly refused to reach out to Rivers. “It was like Stalin had sent me to Siberia,” she said. When Jay Leno took over the show, he reportedly wanted to honor Carson’s wishes, and didn’t invite Rivers to appear. After Jimmy Fallon was named host in 2014, he invited Rivers to appear on his first show, 49 years to the day, of her first appearance.

38. Love hurts: over the past five years, the Federal Trade Commission reported that people have lost over $1.3 billion to “romance scams,” or people who defraud others using fake dating profiles. After they charm people, the scammers will then ask for money, then disappear. In 2022, nearly 70,000 people reported being tricked by a romance scam, with a median loss of $4,400. The FTC also noted that beginning in 2021, many of these scams have been linked to cryptocurrency. Some of the most common scam attempts usually involve phrases like “I or someone close to me is sick, injured, or in jail,” “I can teach you to invest,” or “I’m in the military far away.”

Freeform / Via giphy.com

39. In 1965, producers were hopeful that The Dating Game would change the TV game show landscape. The show’s premise was unique: a woman would quiz three men in order to decide which one she wanted to date. The catch? They wouldn’t be able to see each other face to face until the winner was selected, so it all came down to the verbal chemistry between the couples. When early tapings began, producer Chuck Barris had a problem. Many of the contestants decided to make a splash by answering the questions with sexually explicit innuendos, making the episodes too inappropriate to air.

Barris decided he would need to scare the contestants into acting appropriately at future tapings. He hired an actor to dress up like a law enforcement official and enter the green room before the taping began. The actor told the men that if they used profanity or sexual references, they would likely be flagged by the Federal Communications Commission and would be charged with a federal offense that might even come with jail time. The stunt apparently worked. Barris reported that there was no more funny business once the taping began. The Dating Game was an immediate hit after it debuted in 1965, and wound up running until 1973, paving the way for many more dating shows on network TV.

40. Candy reigns supreme as the top Valentine’s Day gift in the United States. Over 44% of people surveyed by Statista said candy or chocolate is their go-to gift. Cards came in second, followed by flowers, a romantic dinner, and wine.

NBC / Via giphy.com

41. Ethel Payne, known as the First Lady of the Black Press, chronicled key moments of the Civil Rights Movement for the Chicago Defender. After finishing school, Payne moved from her Chicago hometown to Japan to work for the Army Special Services club. In 1950, Payne began writing diary entries about the segregation and mistreatment of Black soldiers she witnessed during the Korean War. After showing excerpts to a journalist covering the war, Payne decided to send her observations to the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper. Although the Defender saw a boost in circulation from printing Payne’s work, she faced criticism for “upsetting the morale of the troops.” In 1951, Payne began writing full-time for the paper.

Payne worked to cover stories that didn’t get a lot of coverage elsewhere. In 1952, she moved to Washington, DC, where she began covering the Civil Rights Movement. Her work pointed out that people needed to “goad lawmakers” into following through with their promises. Payne became the first Black woman to join the White House Press Corps, where she was known for pressing President Eisenhower on issues relating to desegregation. He notably refused to call on her after he responded poorly to one of her tough questions, which garnered a lot of criticism in the press. The administration even attempted to discredit her as a journalist, and allegedly ran an investigation into her background and finances. In 1970, Payne became the first Black woman to appear on a national network as a radio and television commentator.

42. In a very interesting twist, the Church of England technically owns a stake in some of the world’s biggest songs, including Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack,” and Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.” The church is one of several investors in Hipgnosis, a company that has spent over $1 billion to acquire the rights to tons of beloved songs. Every time a song owned by Hipgnosis plays, the church earns royalties from the track. According to Merck Mercuriadis, the founder of Hipgnosis, the music the company owns is “more valuable than gold or oil.” He added that the purchase of music is one of the most stable investments, adding that buying a hit song can result in 30–40 years of reliable income.

Apple Music / Columbia Music / Via giphy.com

43. While Dirty Dancing is considered a classic today, filmmakers had pretty low expectations ahead of the movie’s 1987 release. The movie was reportedly turned down 43 times before coming to fruition. In 2017, screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein revealed that she was asked to remove several controversial plot points, including an abortion storyline and commentary about race, war, and politics, from the film. The movie’s producers had allegedly secured a sponsorship from an acne cream company, who reportedly tried to back out after learning there was a scene with an illegally performed abortion. Bergstein said she refused to remove it because without it, the movie’s entire plot would “fall apart.”

The movie also was almost renamed I Was a Teenage Mambo Queen in the lead-up to its release, after Canadian authorities reportedly held up the film’s dailies at the border, believing it was pornography. Dirty Dancing initially received bad reviews from test audiences. During one screening, 39% of audience members claimed they didn’t even realize that the movie had an abortion subplot. As a result, it was decided that the movie would only run in theaters for a week, then would go straight to home video. To everyone’s surprise, the movie went on to become a massive success, bringing in $214 million at the box office. The movie’s theme song, “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” even won the Oscar for Best Song.

44. Turns out that Apple founder Steve Jobs was quite the prank caller! In 2007, Jobs made the first public call from an iPhone, during which he called a San Francisco Starbucks and ordered 4,000 lattes. The call took place in front of a huge audience at Apple’s iPhone unveiling. Jobs immediately told the barista who answered the call — “Hannah” Zhang — that he was just kidding. Zhang said she had no idea that Jobs was the prank caller. “I feel very happy and lucky that I had a chance to actually talk to him,” she told Fast Company. “It means a lot to me that he picked our Starbucks.” Zhang also added that the call inspired hundreds of copycat pranksters over the years.

45. Crazy Rich Asians, written by Kevin Kwan, began as a bestselling book series, then went on to become one of the biggest films of 2018. The movie, which was notably comprised of an all-Asian cast, made headlines for the way the film finally centered Asian stories. In 2013, shortly after the first novel in the trilogy was released, the film rights were bought by a production company called Color Force. Instead of attaching the movie to a mainstream studio, they instead tried to secure funding from Asian sources in order to stay as true to the source material as possible. Kwan told the Hollywood Reporter that he was disheartened when he learned that some studios were interested in “whitewashing” the film by casting white actors to portray Asian characters.

When it came to determining who would control the film’s release, it started a bidding war between major studios and streaming services. In October 2016, it came down to a competition between Warner Brothers and Netflix to decide who would distribute the movie, which was the first film with an all-Asian cast since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club. Warner Brothers had beaten out all of the other major studios, while Netflix was reportedly offering massive salaries for the cast, a fully green-lit trilogy deal, and complete artistic freedom. After learning this, Warner Brothers reportedly told Kwan, director Jon M. Chu, and the movie’s producers that they had 15 minutes to decide, otherwise their offer was taken off the table.

Kwan ultimately decided to turn down Netflix’s offer, because the streamer reportedly did not want to grant the film a theatrical run. “We wanted to have that cinematic experience,” he said. “We wanted to have a huge premiere and an opening, and we wanted to play in theaters where families, friends, people could really come together as communities and see this movie.” He told CNN that the filmmakers were aware that his decision was a huge gamble, but he ultimately believed the movie could be more impactful if it had a theatrical run. Kwan also revealed that if he had taken the Netflix deal, he “could have moved to an island and never worked another day.” Turns out, his gamble paid off! Crazy Rich Asians went on to make $239 million at the box office and was widely praised for bringing Asian representation to the big screen.

Warner Brothers / Via giphy.com

46. Pelicans became extremely popular in medieval art because they were seen as symbols of sacrifice, and were often used in Christian allegories. When the birds were unable to find food for their young, they would peck flesh from their own breast in order to nourish their babies. As a result, depictions of this process were often seen on liturgical crosses, church doorways, and altars.

47. I wouldn’t expect Princess Diana to be an American football fan, but in 1991, she was spotted sporting a Philadelphia Eagles jacket. The photos recently resurfaced in the lead-up to the Super Bowl, where the Eagles lost to the Kansas City Chiefs. So, how did a British royal with no apparent connection to Philly end up with the coat? Legend has it that Diana met Jackie Edelstein, a former statistician for the Eagles, at Grace Kelly’s funeral. Although Kelly, who was the Princess of Monaco, and Diana were acquainted because of their royal connections, Kelly was actually born and raised in Philadelphia.

Diana and Edelstein reportedly got to talking, and the royal confessed that silver and green (the colors of the Eagles), was her favorite color combination. Edelstein took that as a sign and decided to send Diana some Eagles merch. The problem? According to Marnie Schneider, the daughter of a former Eagles owner, the team wanted to send Diana Eagles apparel fit for a royal. “My grandfather said, ‘She’s the princess! You can’t send her just T-shirts,'” she said. “‘We gotta do something special for this woman.'” The team ended up sending Diana a gift box, which included the classic Eagles jacket. Diana was later spotted wearing it while dropping Prince Harry off at school.

48. In 2002, Mila Kunis starred in American Psycho 2, in which she played a college student studying criminology by day, and an aspiring serial killer by night. Patrick Bateman, the star of the original American Psycho, even made several appearances in flashback scenes, although he was not portrayed by Christian Bale, who played the character in the first film. The issue? Kunis had no idea the movie was going to become a sequel to American Psycho. She filmed it under the impression that it would be a completely different film called The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die. After shooting was completed, filmmakers decided to link it to the original film and filmed additional scenes featuring Bateman that are supposed to be told from Kunis’s character’s memories.

49. The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” inspired Brian Wilson to revamp the Beach Boys’ music. Wilson, who estimates that he’s listened to the song over 1,000 times, told the New York Times that he was so shocked the first time he heard the song that he had to pull his car over. At the time, Wilson said he was discouraged by the surf music the Beach Boys had been putting out, so he bought a copy of the single and began studying it to determine exactly why he loved it so much. “I started analyzing all the guitars, pianos, bass, drums and percussion,” he said. “Once I got all those learned, I knew how to produce records.”

Despite his intense studying, Wilson said he believes he has never been able to produce a record as good as “Be My Baby.” “It’s the greatest record ever produced,” he said. “No one will ever top that one.” In fact, “Be My Baby” is such a beloved song that it has memorably appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows, from Baby Mama to The Wonder Years. The song has since been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and was even sampled in Eddie Money’s 1980s hit “Take Me Home Tonight,” which helped to reinvigorate Ronettes member Ronnie Spector’s career. It’s estimated that the song has played on the radio so frequently, that it has the equivalent of 17 years of continuous airplay time.

51. While you likely have heard of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, have you ever learned about the Teapot Dome Scandal, which has been dubbed the Watergate of the early 20th century? Albert Fall, the secretary of the interior under President Warren G. Harding, used his position to illegally give his friends in the oil business government-owned land in exchange for money. During Harding’s campaign, he received financial support from many influential men in the oil business. Fall was friends with many of them, and his appointment to Harding’s cabinet was likely influenced by these connections.

Prior to joining Harding’s administration, Fall worked as a lawyer for the logging and mining business. In 1922, he attempted to use his political power to grant these businesses the use of public lands, which was shot down by Congress. Fall then set his sights on using public lands as storage sites for oil reserves. This had been attempted by William Howard Taft during his presidency, but Fall was finally able to push it through. He ended up granting only his own business contacts use of the land, which included Teapot Dome in Wyoming.

Fall eventually ended up receiving gifts from many of the men in exchange for granting them use of the land. The gifts caused the Senate to take attention, and they soon launched an inquiry under suspicion of bribery. Fall was found guilty of accepting the bribes, and became the first Cabinet member to ever go to prison. Harding unexpectedly died in 1923 before facing any repercussions from his own alleged involvement in the scheme. As a result of the scandal, he has gone down in history as one of the worst presidents of all time. The Teapot Dome scandal also changed the Senate forever: it marked the first time Congress was able to subpoena witnesses in investigations.

52. Things looked pretty dire for the bald eagle population in the United States for a long time. In the late 1960s, there were reportedly less than 500 breeding pairs of the birds left. This decline was attributed to both hunting and the use of DDT, an insecticide that made eagle eggs so fragile that they often broke during the incubation period. In 1972, DDT was banned, and soon, the bald eagle populations started to trend upwards. Now, bald eagles are no longer facing extinction. In 2021, NPR reported that there are over 70,000 breeding pairs of bald eagles in the United States. Despite this success story, about two-thirds of native bird species are now endangered due to rising temperatures.

BBC / Via giphy.com

53. Have you ever noticed that on tons of TV shows, characters all drink beer from the same fictional brand? Heisler Beer has appeared on pretty much every show under the sun, from New Girl to Brooklyn 99, Stranger Things to True Detective. In fact, Heisler is so ubiquitous that it’s been dubbed the “Bud Light of fake beers.” The brand was developed by Studio Graphics, a branch of Independent Studio Services, a company that creates tons of movie and TV props.

Heisler first appeared on-screen in the 1990s, and its origin story is a bit of a mystery. According to Molly Rummel, the assistant manager of Studio Graphics, no one quite knows who ended up designing the label, which has since grown to include the original Heisler, Heisler Lite, and several different vintage labels from the 1940s to the 1980s. They also can’t pinpoint the first time it appeared on-screen, although it’s now a TV staple. It’s estimated that the production team for New Girl bought over 40 cases of Heisler over the show’s run. Studio Graphics has actually developed about 40 fictional beer brands, but Heisler has stood out as the most enduring. The wide use of the labels has even contributed to fan theories that their favorite shows are somehow connected.

Rummel said that developing fictional alcohol brands is necessary for TV because it’s incredibly difficult to get permission to use real beer labels on camera. “No one’s drinking a beer and going to bed. That would be boring,” she told Thrillist. “People are drinking a beer and beating somebody up or getting drunk.” Rummel also revealed Studio Graphics will often fill the cans or bottles with non-alcoholic beer to add to the authenticity, but added that a lot of actors end up replacing it with water or soda while filming multiple takes. Studio Graphics ended up patenting the Heisler name, which they believe marks the first time a fictional brand has filed for a patent.

54. While raw salmon in sushi is pretty common these days, it was actually unheard of in Japan for years. Salmon in sushi was popularized by Norwegians in an attempt to tame their overabundance of salmon. In 1980, the Norwegian government hired Bjorn Eirik Olsen to sell salmon to a country that frequently used fish in its cuisine. Olsen set his sights on Japan and approached Japanese fish industry executives to sell the salmon. Much to his surprise, the executives said they didn’t want salmon sushi, because they didn’t like the color or the taste. Eventually, Olsen ended up striking a deal with Nishi Rei, a freezer food company, to create salmon sushi to sell in grocery stores. Soon, salmon sushi became incredibly popular and started showing up in cheap sushi shops in Japan.

55. The demand for memorabilia from space missions skyrocketed after the successful Apollo space missions in the late 1960s. In 1970, three Apollo 15 astronauts — Jim Irwin, David Scott, and Al Worden — were contacted by Walter Eierman, a memorabilia dealer who was working with Hermann Sieger, a German stamp collector. Eierman had concocted a plan: each astronaut would get $7,000 in exchange for bringing a large number of Sieger’s stamp covers to space, so they could be sold as items that had been on a space mission. The astronauts had to covertly hide the covers in their pockets in order to prevent officials from seeing the contraband.

After returning from space, the astronauts handed the covers over and received their money. The issue? Eierman and Sieger began to not-so-secretly sell the covers for $1,500 apiece throughout Europe. US authorities soon caught wind of the scam and ended up confiscating the unsold covers. Not only did the astronauts end up having to forfeit the money they made, but NASA also ended up banning them from all future space flights. Turns out that each astronaut was in breach of their contract, which clearly stated all astronauts were forbidden from taking memorabilia for profit into space.

56. I don’t know exactly what flavor I was expecting the white mystery Airhead to be, but it turns out, it can honestly vary from day to day! In 1993, a teen wrote into Airheads suggesting a white mystery flavor. The brand loved the idea, and set out to formulate exactly what this mysterious flavor might be. All Airheads actually start out white, with the food coloring being added later in the production process. At the end of each day, there are normally flavors left over. The company takes all of the remaining flavors that aren’t quite enough to make a full batch, and blends them together to create the beloved white mystery Airhead, meaning that any given mystery Airhead might taste sliiiightly different.

57. Fred Rogers was notorious for the gentle manner in which he explained some tough topics to his young audience, and Robert Kennedy’s assassination was no exception. In February 1968, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood made its TV debut. The following months proved to be extremely tumultuous: Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in April, and tensions surrounding the Vietnam War during the Tet Offensive were building, spurring protests and social unrest. On June 6, 1968, Robert Kennedy, a Democratic candidate in the presidential primary, was killed in California. During the next episode of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, a puppet named Daniel Tiger asks the host, “What’s assassination?”

Rogers, assuming many children had likely seen or heard news coverage about the assassination, reportedly stayed up all night following Kennedy’s funeral to perfect his script. In the episode, Rogers encouraged children to cope with tragedy in ways that felt comfortable to them. In the years that followed, Rogers consoled American children after tragedies like the murder of John Lennon, 9/11, and a series of devastating child murders in Atlanta from 1979–1981. “What children probably need to hear most from us adults is that they can talk with us about anything and that we will do all we can to keep them safe in any scary time,” he said of his approach to teaching about tragedy.

59. Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday,” which has often been dubbed “the Black birthday song,” was originally performed as a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Wonder reportedly grew up in awe of King’s efforts to end segregation, and even attended King’s funeral after he was assassinated in 1968. Wonder soon teamed up with Rep. John Conyers Jr. to support a bill that would create a national holiday in honor of King. Although many were in support of the bill, it got held up for years by politicians who thought King was “lawless” and supported Communism.

While working to push the holiday through, Wonder decided he would create a musical birthday tribute to King. However, Wonder reportedly didn’t quite know the musical arrangement for “Happy Birthday,” and instead ended up writing an entirely new birthday song, with lyrics referencing King. After Jimmy Carter was elected president, the movement to officially recognize King’s birthday picked up steam. Wonder made appearances with King’s widow, planned a four-month tour to increase buzz about the proposed holiday, and included his version of “Happy Birthday” on a 1981 album. By 1983, Congress agreed to recognize King’s birthday. The first official celebration was held in 1986, with Wonder headlining the concert.

61. Chances are, you were assigned Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird at some point in your schooling. Lee, who lived in a small Alabama town, had always dreamed of becoming a writer and longed to follow her friend, Truman Capote, to New York City to kickstart her literary career. In 1956, two of Lee’s close friends gave her the equivalent of a year’s salary for Christmas so she could quit her job and write her novel. Lee ended up completing a novel that she titled Go Set A Watchman. After selling the book to a publisher, she was encouraged to expand on the flashback scenes in the novel, and ended up spending two years rewriting the book. The book, which was renamed To Kill A Mockingbird, became an immediate success.

Despite the positive reaction to the novel, Lee never published another book, and remained incredibly private for the rest of her life. In the years following the book’s release, some speculated that Lee actually didn’t write the novel, and insisted that Capote was the actual mastermind behind the beloved book. This theory was seemingly debunked after a letter Capote wrote to his aunt in 1959 was discovered. In the note, Capote told his aunt that he had read Lee’s novel and was impressed, never once claiming he had any involvement. In 2015, HarperCollins published Go Set A Watchman, despite criticism that Lee, who was living at an assisted living facility, was being taken advantage of in order for the publisher to profit from the novel. The book sold 1.1 million copies in the first week. Lee died in 2016.

62. If you have a pair of Converse sneakers, you might have noticed that there’s a thin layer of felt on the bottom of the shoe. Turns out, shoes with the fuzzy fabric on the sole are taxed less than solid soles while being imported, saving the company major money on tariffs. By maintaining the felt soles, Converse is likely taxed at only 3%, instead of 37.5%.

63. Charlotta Bass was the first Black woman to run for vice president of the United States. Bass was born in South Carolina but moved to Rhode Island to attend Pembroke, a women’s college. While in Rhode Island, she began selling ads and subscriptions for the Providence Watchman, a Black newspaper. Bass was forced to leave Rhode Island because of health concerns and settled in California, where the climate was better for her asthma and arthritis. In California, she took a job at the Eagle, a Black-owned newspaper. In 1912, she was asked to take over the paper when the founder died. A few months later, Bass was able to buy the paper using $50 she borrowed from a storeowner, making her one of the first Black women to own a newspaper.

In 1914, she married Joseph Bass, and together, the couple transformed the paper into the largest Black-owned paper on the West coast. Bass used her platform to speak out about injustices against Black people, and soon began touring the country to speak out against racism, covering everything from racist hiring practices to the KKK. The KKK even sued Bass for printing a letter that exposed their plans to harm a Black leader, but she won the case. A few members came to her office at night, but she reportedly scared them off with a pistol. Through the 1930s and 1940s, Bass continued advocating for Black communities, encouraging them to only spend their money at businesses that supported desegregation, and demanding police reform.

Up to this point, Bass was reportedly a Republican, but switched to become Independent after expressing dissatisfaction with the way both parties treated Black voters. She was often suspected of being a Communist due to her vocal opposition to the atomic bomb. Bass also was spotted visiting the Soviet Union, which caused the FBI to launch an investigation. The US Postal Service also attempted to revoke the mailing rights for the Eagle because of her alleged connection to the Communist party. In 1951, Bass sold the paper and moved to New York, where she became the first Black woman to run for vice president. Bass was part of the Progressive Party’s ticket and ran alongside Vincent Hallinan, an attorney from California. After losing the election, Bass returned to California, where she still advocated for equality and voter rights until her death in 1969.

64. You’ve probably heard the buzz around the new movie Cocaine Bear, but did you know that the film is actually based on a true story? In 1985, Andrew Carter Thornton II, a Kentucky drug dealer, dropped forty packages of cocaine from his plane into a Georgia forest after the engine started to malfunction. Thornton jumped from the plane with 75 pounds of drugs on his person and died. An unsuspecting bear stumbled across the drugs and consumed all 40 packages, which proved to be fatal. The bear’s autopsy showed that the drug caused a multitude of problems, including cerebral hemorrhaging, a stroke, respiratory failure, renal failure, heart failure, and hyperthermia.

Universal / Via giphy.com

The medical examiner decided that the bear’s body should be stuffed and put on display, so he donated it to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. At some point in the early 1990s, the bear’s body was moved to a storage area out of concern that it could be damaged by wildfires. About a month later, the storage facility was robbed, and country singer Waylon Jennings ended up with the bear. Jennings claimed he didn’t know the bear was stolen when he bought it from a pawn shop. Jennings gave the bear to his friend Ron Thompson, who had been close friends with Thornton. A mall in Lexington, Kentucky wanted to acquire the bear and had reportedly been keeping tabs on it. When Thompson died, the bear was sold at auction to a man named Zhu T’ang. Just a few years later, T’ang passed away, and the mall purchased the bear, where it’s still on display.

66. Abraham Lincoln is arguably one of the most recognizable US presidents, but back in his day, people thought he was pretty ugly. A North Carolina newspaper wrote that he was “coarse, vulgar and uneducated,” while the Houston Telegraph called him “the leanest, lankiest, most ungainly mass of legs, arms and hatchet face ever strung upon a single frame. He has most unwarrantably abused the privilege which all politicians have of being ugly.” There was even a chant about Lincoln’s looks: “We beg and pray you — don’t, for God’s sake, show his picture.” In a pretty sad twist, Lincoln was aware of people’s opinions about his looks and wanted to find a way to shut them down.

During Lincoln’s campaign in 1860, photography was becoming more widespread, so he turned to Mathew Brady, a famous photographer who was reportedly “not averse to certain forms of retouching.” After giving the Cooper Union address that helped him clinch the Republican nomination, Lincoln sat for a photo with Brady, who ended up using both posing hacks and straight-up retouching to create a photo Lincoln was happy with. Brady reportedly directed lots of light to Lincoln’s face to distract from his “gangly” body, made him curl his fingers so they didn’t appear so long, and enlarged Lincoln’s collar so his neck would look more proportionate. Lincoln later said that he believed “Brady and the Cooper Institute made me president.”

Lincoln eventually sat for over 30 more sessions with Brady. His portraits of the president appear on both the penny and the five-dollar bill. After Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, some people continued to get creative with imagery of the president. Thomas Hicks reportedly superimposed Lincoln’s face on an image of John C. Calhoun’s body in order to make Lincoln look more impressive. The kicker? Lincoln and Calhoun were fierce opponents who had very different viewpoints on slavery. The retouching went unnoticed for over a century.

67. Have you ever wondered why seals have whiskers? A seal’s whiskers are highly sensitive, which gives them a bit of a boost while hunting for food. They can feel vibrations through their whiskers, which are specially shaped to help them detect creatures moving past them. The whiskers especially come in handy when seals are traveling in low-visibility areas.

Georgia Aquarium / Via giphy.com

68. In 1996, several huge publications, from CNN to National Geographic, wrote about a jewel heist at the Carlton Hotel, home of the Cannes Film Festival and the setting of the Alfred Hitchcock film To Catch a Thief. They reported that the heist took place in August 1994, with three masked gunmen allegedly storming into the hotel’s jewelry store, where they reportedly got away with between $43 million and $77 million worth of jewels. There were reportedly eyewitness accounts claiming that people heard dozens of gunshots. Despite this, there were no reported injuries, and the hotel, which dates back to 1911, made it out unscathed. The heist was even awarded a Guinness World Record for being the costliest jewel heist in history.

Despite being discussed in the media, most people are pretty certain that this jewel heist never actually happened. Let me explain — after reporting about the crime came out, people understandably decided to dig deeper into the details. They found that there was no reporting about the heist until news of the Guinness World Record broke. There were no photos of the crime, no information about the identities of the suspects, and no record from the Carlton Hotel about the heist. Even local police had no clue what they were talking about and seemed flummoxed by the world record. Despite the lack of confirmation, people kept repeating the story, and no one has any idea where Guinness got it from.

After police worked through several potential theories, they concluded it was likely that Leviev organized the heist. “The jeweler Leviev organized this robbery because he owns the entire diamond-extraction sector from the mines until the sale, and can therefore resize his stones and put them back on the market while getting his hands on the insurance money,” French police concluded. Leviev has denied any wrongdoing. In Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler, Simon Leviev, the scammer at the center of the documentary, claimed to be Leviev’s son and told people he was heir to a diamond fortune. Lev Leviev’s family ended up filing a lawsuit against Simon for fraud.

NBC / Via giphy.com

69. Speaking of jewels, it’s believed that it rains diamonds on Neptune and Uranus. While the core of these planets are solid, scientists believe they’re surrounded by icy oceans, where the pressure is so high that it likely forms diamonds. Researchers have even been able to recreate this phenomenon. Other scientists have hypothesized that if temperatures are as high in the planets’ cores as they’re believed to be, there could potentially be “oceans of liquid carbon with gigantic diamond icebergs swimming on top of it.”

70. The Toy Story movies have earned acclaim for not only their spot-on storytelling but the way they helped Pixar revolutionize the animation process. Many people did not believe the first film would be a success. Prior to the movie’s release, Pixar, helmed by Steve Jobs, had been struggling, and the company’s future hinged on the movie’s reception. Pixar hoped to include Barbie in the first film, but Mattel turned their request down, allegedly because they thought the movie would flop and end up hurting the Barbie brand. After the success of the movie, Mattel not only allowed Pixar to use Barbie, but created a new tie-in doll.

It turns out we’re lucky Toy Story 2 made it to theaters! A Pixar employee was reportedly performing regular file maintenance, when they accidentally deleted the entire movie, including all of the character model files. Employees began to notice that elements of the characters were disappearing while they were animating, and they went into the film’s folder to see what happened. Much to their dismay, the movie was erasing, and there was nothing they could do to reverse the damage — 90% of the movie was gone before they found a solution. Galyn Susman, the film’s supervising technical director, was working from home after giving birth. She had luckily made a copy of the movie and was able to restore nearly the entire film, bringing a laptop containing the backup to Pixar wrapped in a blanket for safekeeping.

Toy Story 3 marked the appearance of Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear. It turns out that the bear was actually supposed to be part of the series from the first movie, but animators didn’t have the correct technology to animate his fur. Pixar was eventually sued by a toy company that claimed they ripped off their line of stuffed bears.

And finally, Don Rickles, who played Mr. Potato Head, died before production began on Toy Story 4. Filmmakers asked his family for permission to splice together some of his old lines in order to ensure his character would have a place in the movie. Pixar ended up combing through footage from the first three films and promotional materials in order to piece together the part.

71. A saguaro cactus is a very late bloomer. The plant is extremely slow-growing — it only grows about one to one and a half inches in its first eight years of life. The cactus grows under a “nurse tree.” Some believe that nurse trees often die because the small cactuses they support take water and nutrients away from them. A saguaro doesn’t grow its first branch until it’s between 50 and 100 years old, depending on the level of precipitation in the area. The cactus is considered an adult at 125 years old and can live for up to 200 years.

72. The Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain in Washington, DC honors Archibald Butt and Francis Millet, believed to be the only two US government officials to die on the Titanic. There has long been speculation that Butt and Millet, who were close friends and lived together at the time of their deaths, were involved in a romantic relationship. Butt was a military official who served under presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft and notably took over several of first lady Helen Taft’s duties after she had a stroke in 1909. Meanwhile, Millet was an artist who served on the Fine Arts Commission. Both men were well-known among Washington’s elite circles and frequently attended parties and events together.

In April 1912, Butt and Millet boarded the Titanic to head back to America after a European vacation. Butt had been under a lot of stress at work, and Millet had allegedly intervened, telling the president that he believed his friend needed a break. Although Millet was married to Elizabeth “Lily” Merrill, she lived in a home in England, while Millet and Butt roomed together in Washington. According to witnesses, both men were spotted helping women and children into lifeboats. In the years following their deaths, historians have found evidence from each man that leads them to believe they may have been gay, although there is no concrete evidence that they were in a relationship. Whether they were together romantically or just best friends, people remarked on how close their relationship was. One friend said they were so close, they had “a sympathy of mind which is most unusual.”

73. Sometimes rabbits enjoy their meal so much, they go back for a second helping by eating their own poop. Eating droppings is actually a crucial part of a rabbit’s diet. They produce cecotropes, a softer type of poop that is meant to be eaten. So, why do rabbits need to eat their poop? Their digestive systems move so quickly that they often miss crucial nutrients, so eating their pellets allows them to reabsorb them.

74. As a kid, I was obsessed with “We Are the World,” the 1980s pop collaboration that brought together some of the world’s biggest artists to perform a single that raised millions for famine relief in Ethiopia. Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, two of the most famous artists in the world at the time, teamed up to write the song, which reportedly took a lot of coordination because they were unsure which artists would show up to the recording session. Several of the artists involved, like Bruce Springsteen, took time off of their tours to fly to Los Angeles to record. Once singers heard about who was participating, many of them reportedly called Richie’s manager, Ken Kragen, begging to be included. Soon, big names like Diana Ross and Willie Nelson were attached to the project.

Prince was also reportedly in talks to attend. There was even an entire solo written for him, but producers were wary that he wouldn’t show up due to a rumored spat between Prince and Michael Jackson. On Jan. 28, 1985, dozens of music’s biggest names arrived at A&M Studios to record the song, where they found a note reading “Check your egos at the door,” because they had only one night to record the entire track. The recording took place after the American Music Awards, and the producers were reportedly approaching people in the middle of the show, asking them to attend. Once they arrived, all of the musicians were separated from their entourages. For many of the attendees, it was the first time meeting, and several of them noted that they were a bit starstruck by some of their famous peers.

The song’s iconic chorus, nicknamed “the heavenly choir,” was the first verse to be recorded. “Everybody started to act like they were in the eighth-grade chorus,” Daryl Hall, of Hall and Oates, said. “It was the weirdest thing I’d ever experienced. All these superstars, whatever you want to call them, we all turned into junior-high kids in chorus.” When singer Cyndi Lauper first heard the song, she allegedly compared it to “a Pepsi commercial.” There were also lots of on-set hijinks. Jackson reportedly took a photo of himself with Springsteen’s Budweiser, then leaked the picture to the press, much to the dismay of his management. When “We Are the World” was released, it skyrocketed to No. 1, becoming one of the fast-selling singles in US pop history.

Despite the backlash, Channel 4 told the media they were proceeding with the film, arguing that they had been planning to honor the “clear decision from the outset to uphold the consensus quite properly reached by the British media” all along. The documentary was reportedly screened for William and Harry’s private secretaries before it aired. In order to address the controversy surrounding the film, Channel 4 decided to air a follow-up program: a televised debate pondering the ethics behind airing the documentary, giving critics a chance to share their thoughts.

77. A 2016 ranking of the United States’ drunkest cities found that 12 of the top 20 cities were in Wisconsin. The data was collected via self-reporting among adults in 381 cities and metropolitan areas. According to the survey, the “drunkest city” is Appleton, Wisconsin. Appleton’s metropolitan area has the ninth largest concentration of bars in America — 26.8% of respondents in Appleton reported drinking in excess, while 30.3% of the area’s driving deaths at the time of the survey involved alcohol in some capacity.

Buffalo Wild Wings / Via giphy.com

78. Even if you’ve never seen an episode of Law and Order, you’ve certainly heard the show’s signature “dum dum” sound effect, which plays over the show’s title card. The iconic sound effect was actually created by blending a surprising medley of noises. In 2005, Mike Post, who was responsible for developing the effect, told the Archive of American Television that he combined a variety of sound effects to achieve the final product. “I sampled a jail door slamming, a couple other things — this clunk clunk, ching ching, chong chong thing, whatever you think it is.”

In 1993, Post even spilled the details on one of the more unique sound effects used by the show: a sample of “500 Japanese men stamping their feet on a wooden floor as part of a large dance class.” Although Post provided the brain power behind the sound effect, he originally was not too keen on the idea. He had been hired by showrunner Dick Wolf to put together Law and Order’s theme song. Wolf later realized he wanted a special sound effect, and tapped Post for the job. While Post claimed he initially told Wolf to “talk to sound effects,” he later agreed. Turns out, it was a pretty lucrative gig! Because the sound effect is technically classified as a piece of music, Post earns royalties every time it’s played. “I call it the ching ching, because I’m making money off of it,” he joked.

80. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is one of the most popular books of all time, continuing to find new fans even 150 years after publication thanks to several film adaptations. However, Alcott wasn’t super keen on the idea for the novel. Her editor reportedly approached her to write a novel for girls, but she was less than thrilled about the idea. Her publisher decided to offer Alcott’s father, Bronson, a publishing contract that reportedly hinged on Alcott agreeing to write the book. She eventually accepted because she wanted to ensure her father’s dream could come true. Alcott ended up writing the novel in about 10 weeks, from May 1868 to July 1868, so the book could be out by September.

Little Women became an instant bestseller and catapulted Alcott into a new sphere of literary fame. The novel was actually broken up into two parts, with the first coming out in September 1868 and the second making its debut in 1869. In the downtime between the release of the first and second book, Alcott said she faced intense pressure from fans, who wanted her character Jo to marry Laurie, Jo’s childhood best friend who was in love with her. Alcott was determined to not give in to fans and was set on having Jo remain unmarried, but she eventually compromised, marrying Jo off to a character named Professor Bhaer. There was a lot of speculation about who Alcott based Laurie on. Biographers think that Alcott struck up a friendship with Ladislas Wisniewski, a Polish musician, in 1865, and believe he is who Laurie is modeled after.

81. In the mid-1970s, Meryl Streep auditioned for the lead role in King Kong. She had reportedly been approached to audition for the part after the son of producer Dino De Laurentiis saw her in a play. On a 2015 episode of The Graham Norton Show, Streep said that after she read for the role, De Laurentiis turned to his son and asked, in Italian, “Why did you bring me this ugly thing?” Streep, who actually speaks Italian, claimed that she responded to De Laurentiis in Italian by sarcastically apologizing that she was not beautiful enough to be in his movie.

82. While Nora Ephron was best known for writing movies like Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, she also reportedly was one of the few people who figured out the real identity of Deep Throat, the anonymous source who provided Washington Post reporters with details that helped them break the Watergate scandal in 1972. Ephron and Carl Bernstein — one of the Post reporters who broke the story — were married from 1976 to 1980. Bernstein claimed that in those years, he never told Ephron Deep Throat’s true identity. “I was never dumb enough to tell her,” he told Today in 2005. However, Ephron claimed she had been able to figure out his identity using some of the details Bernstein had spilled and reportedly had been dropping hints for over 30 years.

On May 31, 2005, Deep Throat was revealed to be Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI. While most of the world was shocked by this, Ephron said she wasn’t surprised at all. “I knew that Deep Throat was Mark Felt because I figured it out,” she wrote in her Huffington Post column. “Carl Bernstein, to whom I was married for a brief time, certainly would never have told me; he was far too intelligent to tell me a secret like that. He refused to tell his children too, who are also my children, so I told them, and they told others, and even so, years passed and no one really listened to any of us.”

In 1980, just as Ephron and Bernstein’s marriage was ending, another reporter had reportedly figured out that Felt was Deep Throat. Richard Cohen, who had worked with Bernstein, had allegedly cracked the case and was planning to move forward with an article that would expose Felt’s identity. Bob Woodward, the reporter who broke the Watergate story with Bernstein, wrote in his memoir that the pair decided to lie to their friend to keep the story under wraps. In 2006, Felt decided to reveal his identity in a Vanity Fair piece. After his revelation, Ephron wrote, “All I can say is that this is a huge load off my mind. Mark Felt is Deep Throat. Don’t say I didn’t try to tell you.”

83. The term “y’all” might not be as Southern as you think. There’s evidence that the word has been around since 1631, where it likely originated in England. Y’all’s first known appearance was in William Lisle’s The Faire Æthiopian, in which he wrote “and this y’all know is true.” Despite this, some historians believe that it’s a mere coincidence that the word was used in England first and think that there were essentially two distinct versions of the word.

ABC / Via giphy.com

84. And finally, Lorraine Hansberry made theater history by becoming the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway. Hansberry, who was born and raised on the south side of Chicago, spent most of her childhood deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Her father worked for the NAACP, and they often hosted prominent Black leaders of the time at their home. In 1937, her family made headlines for moving into an all-white neighborhood. A mob forced the family out, prompting them to sue. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1940, the family won Hansberry v. Lee, which made discriminatory housing practices illegal. Hansberry became interested in theater while studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and decided to leave school early to pursue a career in the arts.

In 1950, Hansberry moved to New York and started taking courses at the New School. While there, she began writing for a progressive publication, which further stoked her passion for civil rights and justice. In 1953, she married Robert Nemiroff, a white and Jewish writer. Interracial marriage was still illegal in many states at the time, and Hansberry faced criticism from Malcolm X for marrying a white man. Hansberry and Nemiroff porced after nine years, but remained close for the rest of their lives. Hansberry later identified as a lesbian, but was never officially out because it was illegal in New York City.

In 1956, Hansberry co-wrote the hit song “Cindy, Oh Cindy.” The profits from the song allowed her to quit her job. She instead started focusing solely on writing, and she finished A Raisin in the Sun, a play that follows a Black family in Chicago and drew heavily on Hansberry’s life experiences. In 1961, the play made it to Broadway. Many people expected it to flop, but it ended up becoming a huge hit, running for 19 months. It was nominated for four Tony Awards. After A Raisin in the Sun‘s initial run ended, it was turned into a film starring Sidney Poitier. Hansberry followed up her debut success with another play. The Sign in Sidney Brunstein’s Window was inspired by her marriage to Nemiroff. It ran for 101 performances and closed on Jan. 12, 1965, the same day Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer at age 34. Nemiroff later finished several of her plays, which eventually made it to Broadway.

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