Facts You Probably don’t Need
- The odds of being dealt a royal flush are 1 in 649,739.
- Midway through the Great Irish Famine, a group of Choctaw Indians collected $710 and sent it to help starving Irish. It had been just 16 years since the Choctaw people had faced their own starvation during the Trail of Tears.
- George Washington was worth $525 million in his day (adjusted for inflation).
- The prestigious Michelin Star, an award that the world’s best chefs work their lives to attain, began as a marketing ploy by Michelin Tires.
- Scipio Africanus, the Roman soldier who would go on to lead the army that defeated Hannibal and won the Second Punic War, first survived several of Rome’s greatest defeats including battles at Ticinus and Cannae.
- In WWII, the Japanese bombed Saskatchewan, Canada. No one was hurt and the only property that was damaged was a fence.
- The full national anthem of Greece has 158 verses.
- Humans are one of the few species of mammal that don’t produce their own vitamin C due to a lack of a certain enzyme.
Facts by Sean McVeigh, factologist.