Facts You Probably don’t Need
- The Wright Brothers achieved flight in a plane that cost roughly $1,000 to build. In the race to fly, they beat Samuel Pierpont Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian, who failed to achieve a successful flight, despite having $50,000 of government funding put toward his attempts.
- Inventors of Bubble Wrap were originally trying to make plastic wallpaper.
- Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the U.S., was the first president to have electricity in the White House but wouldn’t touch the switch because he was too scared of being electrocuted.
- When Wilt Chamberlain became the first NBA player to earn $100,000 in salary in 1965, his longtime rival Bill Russell demanded that his own salary be raised to $100,001. His salary was immediately raised.
- Germany finally paid off all of its World War I debt in 2010.
- The agave plant, from which tequila is made, is a member of the lily family.
- Julius Caesar owned a pet giraffe that Pliny referred to as a “wild sheep” because of its docile nature. Caesar eventually ended up feeding his giraffe to the lions at the Coliseum.
- Charlie Chaplin’s daughter played Charlie Chaplin’s mother in the 1992 biopic “Chaplin.”
Facts by Sean McVeigh, factologist.
