It's True! (Part 14)
The U.S. Capital has its own private underground subway. It was built in 1909 and originally had lemon-yellow Studebakers that held eight senators and took 45 seconds to cover a 760-foot tunnel. It's still in use today but the public can't get on without a congressional escort. A new automated line began operation in 1994 with three cars that can whisk 25 people at a speed of 14mph from the Hart Senate building to the Capital in less than two minutes.
Human Chain - On August 23, 1989, two million people held hands across three countries. The human chain stretched 419 miles from Tallinn, Estonia through Riga, Latvia to Vilnius, Lithuania. There were no cell phones, just radios and buses to stay in sync. Within two years, all three nations broke free from Soviet rule.
Whale tangle - In 2017, a young humpback whale got tangled in more than 800 feet of coaxial cable off the coast of Maui, something never seen before. A NOAA rescue team cut it free, unsure if the whale would survive. The whale turned up seven years later in the area alive and fully healed.
Iron Maiden Ed Force One - Lead singer of Iron Maiden Bruce Dickenson holds a real airline pilot's license. For their 2016 world tour, Iron Maiden leased a Boeing 747 and painted it with a giant Eddie on the tail. It flew the band, crew and 12 tons of gear through a 36-country tour.
Farm Aid - In February of 1979, thousands of farmers drove their tractors into Washington D.C. to protest the administration's farm policy. When they arrived, DC Police barricaded the tractors on the National Mall and locals called them a nuisance. A few days later, a blizzard buried the city under two feet of snow. Guess who came to their rescue? The tractors were among the only vehicles still moving and the farmers spent the next two days plowing streets and driving doctors and nurses to hospitals. The District of Columbia that originally scorned them now thanked them for their service.
Seed Vault - The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is drilled over 328 feet into an Arctic mountain in Norway, keeping more than 1.3 million seed samples frozen. Even if the power fails, the permafrost keeps them safe.
Roy Sullivan - A US park ranger by the name of Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning SEVEN TIMES between 1942 and 1977 and survived every incident. The bolts burned off his eyebrows, set his hair on fire more than once, seared his shoulder and blew the nail off one of his toes. He started carrying a can of water in his truck to put himself out. Coworkers avoid him during storms, and he carries the Guinness World Book distinction of being the most lightning struck person in history.
Melby the Manatee - a 410-pound manatee swam up a Florida storm drain chasing warm water during a cold snap and got stuck under a street unable to turn around. Rescuers tore up 10,000 pounds of concrete to pull the animal free. Melby spent the next eight weeks at Sea World in rehab and then was released back into the ocean 105 pounds heavier.
YouTube was launched on Valentine's Day 2005 as a video dating site. Its slogan was, "TUNE IN, HOOK UP". The idea was for users to upload videos of their ideal partner, but the idea flopped and nobody loaded their videos. So, the founders opened the platform to take any video and two years later Google paid $1.65 BILLION for it.
Frankie Muniz, who played Malcolm in Malcolm in the Middle left Hollywood once the show ended to pursue another dream. Today, he races full-time in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and finished in the top 10 at Daytona in his rookie season. Guessing he's in the middle of the pack?
Kurt Russell was a pro baseball player before he was a movie star. He spent three years in the minor leagues. In 1973, he was hitting .563 in just six games at Double-A with the California Angels. A baserunner came in high and hit him hard at second base, tearing his rotator cuff and ending his baseball career.
The Empire State Building's spire was designed as a boarding dock for airships. Passengers would cross an open gangplank 1,250 feet above the street, then ride an elevator down. In September 1931, a small airship docked there for three minutes in 40 MPH winds. Two weeks later, a blimp lowered newspapers to the tower on a 100-foot rope. Updrafts made the mast unusable, so no airship ever truly docked there.
A London skyscraper accidentally became a giant curved mirror. Its glass facade focused sunlight into a beam so intense that it melted a parked Jaguar, scorched a shop and allowed a reporter to fry an egg on the pavement. Incredibly, the architect had built the same flaw in Las Vegas years earlier.
Rogaine was not developed to grow hair. Pharmaceutical company Upjohn developed minoxidil in the 1950's to treat ulcers - it failed. They pivoted to a blood pressure drug, called it Loniten in 1979. During these trials, researchers discovered up to 80% of patients grew unexpected hair. Upjohn published this "side effect" in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1980 and then launched Rogaine in 1988 as the first drug the FDA ever approved to regrow hair.
Wombats are the only animal on Earth that poops in cubes. 80-100 neat, flat sided blocks every night! For years, no one could explain why this happened until an engineer by the name of Patricia Yang mapped a wombat's intestines and found two stretchy groove regions where the gut walls flex unevenly, molding the waste into cubes. The wombat then stacks them to mark its territory - cubes don't roll away.
So interesting... who knew!? :)
Some good reads, Frankie Muniz story is particularlyinteresting because of my Sim Racing hobby!