In 1974, a US soldier stole a helicopter from Fort Meade in Maryland and flew to the White House in Washington D.C. As he hovered above the south grounds, the Secret Service shot and injured him, forcing him to land. He received a one-year prison sentence and $2,400 in fines. 

   A lawyer in Toronto fell to his death in 1993 after he threw himself against a window on the 24th floor of a building in an attempt to prove to a group of visitors that the glass was “unbreakable”, an act he had done twice before. The glass did not break, but popped out of the window frame.

   Astronauts can’t cry in space. Because of the weightless environment, the tears just collect in little balls and sting your eyes. –

   In 2002, a Croatian diver got lost in an underwater cave and stabbed himself in the chest to avoid the agony of drowning. It was the first case of someone committing suicide while diving. –

   There is a Royal Navy superstition that whistling on a ship can summon strong winds. Traditionally, the only person allowed to whistle is the ship’s cook, as it means he’s not eating the food. 

Mexico’s presidential palace is 14 times larger than the White House and started allowing visitors for the first time in 2018. ...

   In 1981, in the small town of Sunol, California, a dog ran for mayor and won –

 In 1504, Christopher Columbus scared the natives of Jamaica to continue to provide him and his hungry men by successfully predicting a total lunar eclipse. When the moon turned red, showing his God was ‘inflamed with wrath”, the frightened community quickly agreed to his request. –

   Former president of Liberia Charles King holds the Guinness World record for the most fraudulent election ever having won the 1927 election with 234,000 votes in a country of 15,000 voters. –

 There is an orchestra which uses instruments made entirely from vegetables, after the show they use the vegetables to make soup

  To promote his newest single, Paul McCartney painted “Hey Jude” on the window of a closed boutique store. A Jewish passerby mistook this as anti-Semitic graffiti (“Jude” meaning “Jew” in German) and smashed the window. 

   An Icelandic tradition called Jólabókaflóð exists, where books are exchanged as Christmas Eve presents and the rest of the night is spent reading them and eating chocolate. –

 A nearly 2,000-year-old loaf of bread was found during excavations in Herculaneum, and the recipe has been recreated by The British Museum.

   Andrew Jackson was the only U.S. President to have had the national debt fully paid, but it only lasted for one year 

   In The Island of Dr. Moreau, Marlon Brando wore a small radio receiver to aid him remembering his lines. Co-Star David Thewlis claimed “He’d be in the middle of a scene and suddenly he’d be picking up police messages and Marlon would repeat, ‘There’s a robbery at Woolworths’.”

  There is a Museum of Broken Relationships in Croatia; you can go and leave there personal objects left by former lovers, accompanied by brief descriptions

The first meal consumed on the moon was bread and wine. Buzz Aldrin brought with him communion bread and wine, along with a small silver chalice, and held communion during a requested radio blackout shortly after landing. –

   Only about 12 rats per year enter Alberta, Canada and are quickly killed by provincial rat control specialists before they can breed. Alberta is the largest rat-free populated area in the world.

   There was an all-black regiment in WWI that the Germans feared so much that they called them the “Harlem Hellfighters”. They never lost an inch of ground and none of them was ever captured. –

 Unlike James Bond, real MI6 agents don’t need a license to kill because everything they do outside the UK is already illegal. The UK spy agency makes Bond-like gadgets for operatives but, as one said after retiring; they “frequently fail to work upon arrival at our destination”

   Adolphe Sax (inventor of the saxophone) survived a three story fall, a gunpowder explosion, drinking a bowl of sulfuric water, a near-poisoning due to furniture varnish, and falling into a speeding river, all before the age of nine. His neighbors called him “little Sax, the ghost.”

   Reinhold Messner climbed Mount Everest, without oxygen. Climbed Nanga Parbat 3 times, the first time he lost his brother and 7 toes in the process. Then climbed it again to become the first person to solo climb it. And climbed it again to retrieve his brother remains.

   Lignum vitae, wood obtained from West Indian trees, is actually hard enough to replace metal in the main bearings of submarines, providing a less-noisy alternative to metal. 

   During WWII, more people died manufacturing V-2 Rockets than were killed by its use. –

    There is a frog which lets itself completely freeze into a ‘frogsicle’ every Winter. Its heart stills, blood stops flowing, and eyes go white because its lenses freeze. In the Summer it thaws and hops away, good as new. 

   In 1964, two students attempted to kidnap the British Prime Minister. The plot was foiled when he offered them beer. They accepted and abandoned their plot. This breach of security was only revealed in 2009. –

  On the Indonesian island of Tana Toraja, if a baby dies before he starts teething, the family cuts a hole in a tree and places the dead child inside. The tree regrows around the baby and absorbs it. 

   There are 2 authors named “Michael Dobbs” who are constantly confused by the press, and their work misattributed to each other. They traced their ancestry back and found that they are distant relatives. –

   During the American Revolution, a young Andrew Jackson was ordered by a British officer to clean his boots. When he refused, the officer slashed his sword at him, resulting in cuts on his hand and cheek. This left him with resentment towards all things British until his conversion in 1842. 

 In 1987, when 300,000 people started crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on foot during the bridge’s 50th-anniversary walk, the stress on the bridge stretched the steel cables, pulled the towers inward and pushed the roadway down by 7 feet. –