by Don Voorhees
At the peak of World War II, the U.S. Navy had 1,248 active ships in its fleet. By 2011, that number was down to 285.
The last U.S. cavalry charge came in 1942, on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.
In 1939, in the biggest financial transaction in world history, Britain shipped $7 billion worth of its gold reserves, stocks, and bonds to Canada aboard a light frigate to protect these assets from the Nazis. England’s National Gallery moved countless priceless works of art to tunnels at a quarry in North Wales. The hiding place of the Crown Jewels still hasn’t been revealed to this day.
Yonatan Netanyahu, the older brother of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was the commander of the elite Israeli commando unit that rescued more than one hundred hostages on a plane that was hijacked and flown to Entebbe Airport in Uganda in 1976. He was the only one of the commandos who was killed.
The Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) is the only military conflict in which helicopters engaged each other in aerial combat.
All the germ strains used by Iraq to develop its biological warfare weapons program came from the United States. They were supplied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Type Culture Collection (a biological sample company) in the 1980s. The CDC claims it thought the anthrax, botulinum toxin, and West Nile virus would be used for medical research.
Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle holds the record for most confirmed kills in U.S. military history—160. Kyle served ten years in Iraq and was so feared by the Iraqis that they nicknamed him the “Devil of Ramadi” and placed an eighty-thousand-dollar bounty on his head. Ironically, Kyle did not die in combat, but was murdered on a Texas gun range in 2013 by a fellow veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The world’s current longest-running war is the civil war in Myanmar that pits the Karen people against the central government. It has been raging since 1949.
Florence Green, the last known veteran of World War I, died in London in 2012. She served in the Women’s Royal Air Force.
THE RIGHT STUFF
Seventy-four graduates from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point have won the Medal of Honor.
Eighteen West Point grads went on to become astronauts, as did thirty-nine from the U.S. Air Force Academy and more than fifty from the U.S. Naval Academy.
MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Soviets sent a flotilla of nuclear-armed submarines to the waters near the United States. Soviet submarine B-59 had been out of contact with Moscow for several days and had no idea what the status of the crisis was. When the U.S. Navy dropped depth charges to signal B-59 to surface, its captain thought that a war had begun. He and the chief political officer on board wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo at the Americans, which would have likely started World War III and led to Armageddon. Protocol dictated that use of a nuke would require the approval of these two men as well as that of second-in-command Vasili Arkhipov, who defied the others and refused to consent.
The only American killed by enemy fire during the Cuban Missile Crisis was U2 spy plane pilot Rudolph Anderson, who was shot down over Cuba during a reconnaissance flight.
DO NOT ENTER
In 1939, the luxury liner Hamburg American brought 936 Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba. Upon their arrival, the passengers were told that they had been duped out of their money and would not be allowed into the country. The ship then sailed to Miami, where the U.S. government also denied them entry. Eventually, England, Holland, Belgium, and France took the Jews. Unfortunately, the latter three nations were later overrun by the Nazis and many of the Jews became victims of the Holocaust.
During World War II, many Jewish refugees in Russia ended up in Japan, the only country that would take them.
During World War II, black American troops were banned from Australia and Iceland.
FENCE SITTERS
Ireland remained neutral in World War II and refused to allow Britain the use of its ports and airfields.
The Irish prime minister expressed his condolences to Germany upon Hitler’s death.
The neutral country of Portugal flew its flags at half staff to mourn Hitler’s passing.
PATTON PLACE
During World War II, American general George Patton stopped halfway across the Rhine to urinate in the river. He liked to mark his territory, much as predatory animals do.
Patton’s great uncle was a Confederate colonel killed during Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.
When Patton was sent south of the border into Mexico during the Punitive Expedition of 1916, he returned to the United States with two dead Mexican leaders strapped to his armored vehicle, like big game killed in the hunt, making him a sensation in the press.
Patton believed that he was the reincarnation of the ancient military leader Hannibal.
TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM
Civil War political figure and lawyer Clement Vallandigham accidentally killed himself while defending a client against a murder charge in 1871. His client was accused of shooting a man in a barroom brawl, but Vallandigham argued that the victim had shot himself while trying to pull a gun out of his shirt. When Vallandigham attempted to recreate the shooting, he shot himself in the process, with a gun he believed to be empty. His point proved, the client was found not guilty.
LONDON FOG
One reason London was so foggy in the old days was due to air pollution, or smog. The famed London “fog” is now a thing of the past.
In Victorian London the mail was delivered seven times a day.
The reason London police are known as “bobbies” is because the Metropolitan Police Force was founded by an act of Parliament introduced by Sir Robert (Bobbie) Peel in 1829.
The Crystal Palace, built in London for the Great Exposition of 1851, had the world’s first public toilets, known as the “Retiring Rooms.” 827,280 people each spent a penny to use the facilities. Using the lavatory is still referred to as “spending a penny” in England.
CLOTHESHORSE
The Aztec ruler, Montezuma, was quite the clotheshorse. He wore four different outfits each day and never the same one twice.
OGRE’S OFFSPRING
Josef Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, defected from the Soviet Union in 1967, while in India, leaving her children behind. Her notorious father had died in 1953.
Svetlana was the darling of the Soviet Union as a child, with countless baby girls named after her.
Svetlana’s mother committed suicide when she was six.
Her brother, Yakov, shot himself in the head because of his father’s brutality toward him, but survived. Stalin remarked afterward that his son “can’t even shoot straight.” During World War II, Yakov was captured by the Germans. They offered to swap him for a captured German field marshal held by the Soviets, but Stalin refused. Yakov then succeeded in killing himself while in a POW camp.
HOLY UNACCEPTABLE
Pope John XXIII, who ruled from 1410 to 1415, was an ex-pirate. His campaign to become pope was funded by the powerful Medici family. Once in power, John XXIII made the Medici Bank the official bank of the papacy.
John XXIII was defrocked for corruption and fornication.
Pope Leo X had an elaborate celebration when he was elected pope in 1513. He had a young boy painted entirely gold for the gala. The unfortunate child died soon afterward.
A pope who is considered an illegal claimant of the Holy See is known as an antipope. Such popes sit in opposition to a legally elected or sitting pope and sometimes enjoy more widespread support than the actual pope. There have been about forty antipopes.
Between 1409 and 1413, there were three different men who simultaneously claimed to be pope, one in Avignon (in France), one in Pisa, and one in Rome.
CHRIST-CROSS
Early Christians began the practice of crossing fingers as
a symbol of the cross. They did so secretly to recognize one another during the time of the Roman persecution and to help ward off evil.
ABOUT FACE
Muslims used to pray facing Jerusalem, not Mecca.
TILL DEATH DO US PART
During the Middle Ages, in Germanic countries, two parties could settle a dispute in the absence of any witnesses or evidence by engaging in a judicial duel. These fights to the death were overseen by a judge/justice, and the survivor was deemed to be right in the eyes of the law.
Men and women, sometimes a husband and wife, could engage each other in a judicial duel. To make for a fairer fight, the man had to stand in a hole up to his waist and was given a pointy wooden club to fight with, while the woman could move freely and fought with a large rock wrapped in the end of her veil, which she would swing at her spouse.
COLA WARS
In the early 1930s, the owner of Pepsi offered to sell his company to the Coca-Cola Company, but they weren’t interested.
By the mid-1980s, Pepsi had a bigger market share than Coke.
In 1985, Coca-Cola was reformulated as New Coke to make it sweeter and less acidic—like Pepsi. New Coke replaced Coke on April 23, 1985. Public outcry forced the company to bring Coke back, as Coca-Cola Classic, on July 10 of the same year.
CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF
A vomitorium was not a place where Romans would puke after a meal to make room for more food. Such a custom was never practiced. A vomitorium was actually a passageway beneath a stadium that allowed rapid flow of spectators in and out. The word derives from the Latin verb vomeo, meaning “to spew forth.”
Nero did not fiddle while Rome burned, but immediately became involved in relief efforts to feed and house the victims.
The Vikings did not wear horns on their helmets. This misconception probably began with an 1876 production of the Richard Wagner opera Der Ring des Nibelungen.
The Pilgrims did not necessarily wear all black, but rather they also wore a variety of colors.
The first American Thanksgiving was not celebrated by the Pilgrims in Plymouth in 1621. Several others predate this, including ones in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565; Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607; and the Berkeley Hundred in the Virginia Colony in 1619. The myth of the Pilgrims being first was promoted by nineteenth-century writer Sarah Josepha Hale, who was pushing for a national day of Thanksgiving.
The Emancipation Proclamation did not abolish slavery in the United States. It only applied to states that had seceded from the Union, who ignored it. The Union’s slaveholding border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia were exempt. Slavery was not abolished until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in 1865.
The story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow starting the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was made up by a newspaper reporter looking for a good story.
Albert Einstein never failed a math class and had mastered calculus by age fifteen.
THE REAL MCCOYS
The Hatfields were from West Virginia and the McCoys from Kentucky. The two clans were separated by the Tug Fork River.
The feud between the two families resulted in twelve deaths between 1880 and 1891.
The U.S. Supreme Court became involved in the feud after a Kentucky posse captured eight Hatfields and brought them across state lines for trial.
In 1888, the eight Hatfields were tried and convicted for having killed one of the McCoys. Seven got life sentences and another was hanged. This essentially put an end to the feud.
In 1979, members of each family reunited on the TV game show Family Feud. One of the prizes was a pig that was kept on stage for the run of the weeklong series of shows. (Ownership of a pig was one of the root causes of the feud.)
THAT’S A LOTTO MONEY
Legend has it that writer/philosopher Voltaire and a friend noticed that the prize in the French lottery in 1728 was much bigger than the cost of all the tickets being sold. They formed a syndicate and bought up all the tickets, winning a large sum of money.
IT TAKES TWO
The tango was considered an obscene lower-class dance, until it migrated to Europe in the early twentieth century and was embraced by Parisian high society.
FAR-OFF FRIENDS
In 1777, Morocco became the first foreign country to recognize America as a unified sovereign nation.
THAT BITES
Alexander I of Greece died in 1920, after a macaque on the palace grounds bit him and the wound became infected.
WELCOME TO THE PARTY
The Republican Party began as an antislavery third party and quickly became a force in the 1856 and 1860 elections. Before this, the Democrats and the Whigs were the main parties.
Not Necessarily the News
MON DIEU!
In 2012, a 140,000-square-foot French château was bulldozed to the ground by mistake. The construction company was supposed to raze a smaller structure on the property and refurbish the mansion. Somehow they got confused.
ARE WE THERE YET?
In December 2012, a 125-mile-long traffic jam on Russia’s M-10 highway stretched from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Fog and heavy snow were to blame.
HO, HO, OH NO!
In 2011, an eighteen-year-old California man got stuck in the chimney of his family’s home while trying to sneak in after his curfew. He was found with his feet hanging in the fireplace. Firefighters pulled the Santa wannabe back up and out using ropes and a ladder.
PISS DRUNK
In 2012, a Colorado woman was arrested after punching a $30 million Clyfford Still oil painting and then pulling down her pants and urinating on it. The drunken art critic, Carmen Tisch, caused $10,000 worth of damage to the picture hanging in a Denver museum.
HIGHWAY TO HELL
In 2012, a New Hampshire women, one Joyce Coffey, was arrested four times in twenty-six hours—three times for playing the AC/DC song “Highway to Hell” too loudly and once for throwing a frying pan at her nephew.
BUSTED
In 2012, a Panamanian woman was arrested at a Barcelona, Spain, airport after coming in on a flight from Bogotá, Colombia, when security agents noticed that she had bloody bandages under her breasts. She was taken to a hospital, where doctors removed two breast implants that were packed with three pounds of cocaine.
FATAL PHONE
In 2012, a Ugandan man contracted the deadly Ebola virus after stealing a cell phone from a patient quarantined at a hospital. The man subsequently was admitted to the same hospital for treatment.
WHIZ KIDS
American Taylor Wilson became the youngest person to build a nuclear fusion reactor, at age fourteen, in 2008.
Six-year-old Lori Anne Madison of Virginia in 2012 became the youngest person ever to qualify for the National Spelling Bee.
FLOTSAM FLOTILLA
In 2012, a huge mass of pumice, eight times the area of Rhode Island, was found floating in the South Pacific. (Pumice is a lightweight volcanic stone that floats in water and is commonly used to smooth skin.)
WHERE’S WILSON?
Sixty-seven-year-old Jennifer Wilson of England spent much of her life searching for her twin sister from whom she was separated at birth. In 2010, a TV production company, doing a show on reuniting families, finally found her sister, who had always lived just three miles away and had the same dentist and doctor.
IN YOUR HONOR
Former Arapahoe County, Colorado, sheriff Patrick Sullivan Jr. was arrested in 2011 on charges that he traded drugs for sex with other men. The former national “Sheriff of the Year,” ironically, was sent to the Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Detention Facility, which is named in his honor.
ADDING INSULT TO INJURY
In 2011, a Kansas couple was held captive in their home by criminal Jesse Dimmick, who was on the run from the police. Dimmick, who had a knife, offered the couple an unspecified amount of money if they wouldn’t call the
authorities. When Dimmick fell asleep, they did so. Dimmick, who is serving an eleven-year sentence for the kidnapping, sued the couple for breach of oral contract and is seeking damages for the $235,000 medical bill he incurred after police shot him while they were rescuing the couple.
NO HORSING AROUND
In 2011, Congress removed restrictions on the sale of horsemeat for human consumption in the United States.
DYING TO MAKE A POINT
In 1993, Toronto lawyer Garry Hoy died while demonstrating to a group of his partners that windows on the twenty-fourth floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre were unbreakable. Hoy threw himself against a window. It didn’t break, but popped out of its frame, falling twenty-four floors to the ground, along with Hoy.
EASY COME, EASY GO
In 2011, a Utah man wrecked a $380,000 Lamborghini Murciélago roadster he had won in a convenience store contest, a mere six hours after picking it up.
CHUBSY-UBSY
In 2011, there was a three-year-old boy in China who weighed 132 pounds. He had weighed just 5.7 pounds at birth.
THAT’S USING YOUR HEAD
In July 2011, a motorcyclist in Onondaga, New York, riding without a helmet to protest the state’s helmet law, died when he flipped over the handlebars and landed on his head on the pavement. Police said he probably would have lived if he had been wearing a helmet.
FLIGHTS OF FRIGHT
On a 2011 Comtel Air flight from India to England, the plane landed in Vienna and the crew demanded hundreds of dollars from each passenger for fuel if they wished to continue on to their destination. Airline officials said later that none of the cash was given to the company.
In 2012, a British Airways flight from Miami to London announced while over the Atlantic Ocean that the plane was about to make a water landing. The warning was repeated again before the crew calmed the passengers down and told them the announcement had been made in error.
