History world and US Bizzare Facts - Page 3

Bizarre Fact #101:
Did you know...
China was the first country to introduce paper money (in 812), but it wasn't until 1661 that a bank (Banco-Sedlar of Sweden) issued banknotes.

Bizarre Fact #102:
Did you know...
Chrysler built B-29's that bombed Japan, Mitsubishi built Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint plant called Diamond Star.

Bizarre Fact #103:
Did you know...
Civil War General Stonewall Jackson died when he was accidentally hit by fire from his own troop.

Bizarre Fact #104:
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Civil War General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson has two separate burial sites. His left arm, which was amputated after the battle of Chancellorsville was buried on a nearby farm. A week later, Jackson died and was buried in Lexington, Virginia.

Bizarre Fact #105:
Did you know...
Czar Paul 1 banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.

Bizarre Fact #106:
Did you know...
Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.

Bizarre Fact #107:
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DaVinci is best remembered as the painter of the Mona Lisa (1504?)and The Last Supper (1495). But he's almost equally famous for his astonishing multiplicity of talents: he dabbled in architecture, sculpture, engineering, geology, hydraulics and the military arts, all with success, and in his spare time doodled parachutes and flying machines that resembled inventions of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Bizarre Fact #108:
Did you know...
DaVinci made detailed drawings of human anatomy, which are still highly regarded today.

Bizarre Fact #109:
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DaVinci wrote notebook entries in mirror (backwards) script, a trick that kept many of his observations from being widely known until decades after his death. It is believed that he was hiding his scientific ideas from the powerful Roman Catholic Church, whose teachings sometimes disagreed with what Leonardo observed.

Bizarre Fact #110:
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DaVinci's name for the painting was La Gioconda. Named for the wife of Francesco del Giocondo; 1503-06

Bizarre Fact #111:
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Despite his great scientific and artistic achievement, Leonardo Da Vinci was most proud of his ability to bend iron with his bare hands.

Bizarre Fact #112:
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Dinner guests during the medieval times in England were expected to bring their own knives to the table.

Bizarre Fact #113:
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During the American revolution, more inhabitants of the American colonies fought for the British than for the Continental Army.

Bizarre Fact #114:
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During the California Gold Rush of 1849 miners sent their laundry to Honolulu for washing and pressing. Due to the extremely high costs in California during these boom years it was deemed more feasible to send the shirts to Hawaii for servicing.

Bizarre Fact #115:
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During the Crimean War, the British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds.

Bizarre Fact #116:
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During the Renaissance blond hair became so much de rigueur in Venice that a brunette was not to be seen except among the working classes. Venetian women spent hours dyeing and burnishing their hair until they achieved the harsh metallic glitter that was considered a necessity.

Bizarre Fact #117:
Did you know...
During the Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.

Bizarre Fact #118:
Did you know...
During the Spanish American War in 1898 there were 45 stars on the American flag.

Bizarre Fact #119:
Did you know...
During World War II the original copies of the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence was taken from the Library of Congress and kept at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Bizarre Fact #120:
Did you know...
During World War II, the U.S. Navy had a world champion chess player, Reuben Fine, calculate - on the basis of positional probability - where enemy submarines might surface.

Bizarre Fact #121:
Did you know...
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts - Charlemagne; and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

Bizarre Fact #122:
Did you know...
Early Egyptians wore sandals made from woven papyrus leaves.

Bizarre Fact #123:
Did you know...
Emir Beysari (1233-1293), an Egyptian of great wealth, drank wine from gold and silver cups, yet he never in all his life used the same cup twice.

Bizarre Fact #124:
Did you know...
England's first great industry was wool. Its export had become the nation's largest source of income by the late Middle Ages.

Bizarre Fact #125:
Did you know...
Escape maps, compasses, and files were inserted into Monopoly game boards and smuggled into POW camps inside Germany during W.W.II; real money for escapees was slipped into the packs of Monopoly money.

Bizarre Fact #126:
Did you know...
False eyelashes were invented by the American film director D.W. Griffith while he was making his 1916 epic, "Intolerance". Griffith wanted actress Seena Owen to have lashes that brushed her cheeks, to make her eyes shine larger than life. A wigmaker wove human hair through fine gauze, which was then gummed to Owen's eyelids. "Intolerance" was critically acclaimed but flopped financially, leaving Griffith with huge debts that he might have been able to settle easily - had he only thought to patent the eyelashes.

Bizarre Fact #127:
Did you know...
Five members of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's family were killed at the Battle of little Big Horn. They were Tom and Boston, two half-brothers, Harry Armstrong Reed, a nephew and a brother-in-law, James Calhoun.

Bizarre Fact #128:
Did you know...
Florence Nightingale served only two years of her life as a nurse. She contracted fever during her service in the Crimean War, and spent the last 50 years of her life as an invalid.

Bizarre Fact #129:
Did you know...
Fourteen years before the Titanic sank, novelist Morgan Robertson published a novel called "Futility". The story was about an ocean liner that struck an iceberg on an April night. The name of the ship in his novel - The Titan.

Bizarre Fact #130:
Did you know...
General Henry Heth (1825-1888) leading a confederate division in the Battle of Gettysburg, was hit in the head by a Union bullet, but his life was saved because he was wearing a hat two sizes too large, with newspaper folded inside the sweatband. The paper deflected the bullet, and the general, unconscious for 30 hours, recovered and lived another 25 years.

Bizarre Fact #131:
Did you know...
George Washington, who was nearly toothless himself, was meticulous with the teeth of the six white horses that pulled his presidential coach. He had their teeth picked and cleaned daily to improve their appearance.

Bizarre Fact #132:
Did you know...
Henry Ford flatly stated that history is "bunk."

Bizarre Fact #133:
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High-wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high-wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.

Bizarre Fact #134:
Did you know...
Historians report that the Roman Emperor Gaius (Caligula) (AD 37-41) was so proud of his horse that he gave him a place as a senate consul before he died.

Bizarre Fact #135:
Did you know...
History's first recorded toothpaste was an Egyptian mixture of ground pumice and strong wine. But the early Romans brushed their teeth with human urine, and also used it as a mouthwash. Actually, urine was an active component in toothpaste and mouthwashes until well into the 18th century - the ammonia it contains gave them strong cleansing power.

Bizarre Fact #136:
Did you know...
Hot cockles was a popular game at Christmas in medieval times. It was a game in which the other players took turns striking the blindfolded player, who had to guess the name of the person delivering each blow. "Hot cockles" was still a Christmas pastime until the Victorian era.

Bizarre Fact #137:
Did you know...
Houses were first numbered in Paris in 1463. In Britain, numbering did not appear until 1708, on a street in London's Whitechapel area.

Bizarre Fact #138:
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Human skulls had been used as drinking cups for hundreds of years. The muscles and flesh were scraped away, the bottom was hacked off and then they were suitable to hold any beverage.

Bizarre Fact #139:
Did you know...
If the arm of King Henry I of England had been 42 inches long, the unit of measure of a "foot" today would be fourteen inches. But his arm happened to be 36 inches long and he decreed that the "standard" foot should be one-third that length: 12 inches.

Bizarre Fact #140:
Did you know...
In 1555, Ivan the Terrible ordered the construction of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. He was so thrilled with the work done by the two architects that he had them blinded so they could never be able to build anything else more beautiful.

Bizarre Fact #141:
Did you know...
In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats.

Bizarre Fact #142:
Did you know...
In 1801, 20 percent of the people in the U.S. were slaves.

Bizarre Fact #143:
Did you know...
In 1865 opium was grown in the state of Virginia and a product was distilled from it that yielded 4 percent morphine. In 1867 it was grown in Tennessee: six years later it was cultivated in Kentucky. During these years opium, marijuana and cocaine could be purchased legally over the counter from any druggist.

Bizarre Fact #144:
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In 1878 Wanamaker's of Philadelphia was the first U.S. department store to install electric lighting.

Bizarre Fact #145:
Did you know...
In 1893, Chicago hired its first police woman. Her name was Marie Owens. While the city was progressive in its hiring practices, Chicago's female police officers were not allowed to wear uniforms until 1956.

Bizarre Fact #146:
Did you know...
In 1907 the first taxicab took to the streets of New York City.

Bizarre Fact #147:
Did you know...
In 1937 the emergency 999 telephone service was established in London. More than 13,000 genuine calls were made in the first month.

Bizarre Fact #148:
Did you know...
In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the first minimum wage in the United States. The new law, considered controversial at the time, established at.25 cents per hour minimum wage and a maximum 44 hour work week for minors.

Bizarre Fact #149:
Did you know...
In 1956 the phrase, "In God We Trust", was adopted as the U.S. national motto.

Bizarre Fact #150:
Did you know...
In 1974 there were 90 tornadoes in the U.S. in one day.