Facts You Probably don’t Need
- Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory was financed in large part by the Quaker Oats company to sell their soon to be released real-life Wonka Bar.
- Scientists recreated a 9th century onion and garlic eye remedy from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript and found that it killed 90% of antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria (MRSA).
- President Teddy Roosevelt once killed a cougar with a knife.
- In 1944, on the verge of the liberation of Paris, Hitler ordered its governor to leave it in a “pile of rubble,” and destroy all religious and historical monuments. The governor refused, saving Paris.
- Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, only had an operating press for a few years. He went bankrupt after his financier successfully sued him for not paying his loans. His then former financier came into possession of the printing press and any unfinished books.
- There is a bone fragment on display at the Museum of Chinon in France that was once reputed to belong to Joan of Arc. A 2008 study showed that the bone actually came from an Egyptian mummy.
- After the American Revolution from the British, in 1777, Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States of America.
Facts by Sean McVeigh, factologist.
