This month: The top - The flop
This year: The top - The flop
This century: The top - The flop
Best of/worse of DYK
Charlie Chaplin secretly took part in a Chaplin look-alike competition in San Francisco. He came in third.
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Most pirates had two eyes in perfect condition, but kept an eye patch on one of them to keep it adjusted to darkness, facilitating night navigation and the passage from the upper deck (in daylight) to lower bridges (very dark).
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Hiroo Onoda was one of the last japanese soldiers to surrender after the defeat of Japan in World War II. He was ordered to lay down his arms on the island of Lubang in 1974 (29 years after the end of WWII).
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In 2005, a Welsh rugby fan named Geoff Huish had so little faith in his national team’s victory against England that he declared : “If Wales win, I’ll cut my balls off.”
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It’s only in 1990 that the World Health Organization took the decision to withdraw homosexuality from its list of mental diseases.
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Movies are shorter on television than in movie theaters. Nothing is cut off, but the speed is slightly increased.
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The forerunners of roller coasters were called “Russian Mountains”. In Russia, they were and are still called “American Mountains”.
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King Edward II of England (1284 – 1327) is believed to have been killed by the insertion of a red-hot iron rod in his rectum.
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In the USA, a federal law made it illegal to have contact with “extraterrestrials or their vehicles”. Enforcement of the law led to a fine of 5000 dollars or a one year prison term.
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As of 2005, one hundred billion Bic pens have been sold all over the world. It represents enough ink to draw a line from here to Pluto and come back… more than 20 times.
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80 billion human beings have been born on the planet since the first humans, and half of them in the last two millennia !
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In Spain, apes have been granted rights similar to humans since June 2008.
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In Ancient Greece, a man was considered more virile if he had a small penis.
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A cockroach can live up to several weeks headless before it dies of starvation.
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LSD is the most expensive material available. When comparing the price per kilo, LSD is 4 times as expensive as diamonds.
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The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris Montmartre has been the host of a continuous prayer since 1885.
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France has been using the German time zone since the German occupation during WWII.
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Arthur Rimbaud suddenly abandoned poetry in 1875, and was later known as a weapons merchant in Abyssinia.
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Tsutomu Yamaguchi is the only man who survived both atomic bombs (at least the only that was officially recognised)...
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Georges Washington used to grow cannabis in his garden.
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Almost everybody has a number of feet above the average of the population.
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The eradication of cats, due to superstitions and beliefs about witchcraft, allowed the spread of the plague.
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Le Train de Nulle Part (The Train from Nowhere) is a French novel written without a single verb by Michel Dansel in 2004.
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