Artist Peter von Tiesenhausen made the top 6 inches of his 800 acre farm a copyrighted work of art to keep oil pipelines out. It costs oil companies $500/h to talk to him.
Nike made a commercial depicting a Samburu tribesman saying “Just Do it” in his native language. An American anthropologist called them out. The spoken phrase actually meant, “I don’t want these, give me big shoes.” Nike’s response: “We thought nobody in America would know what he said.”
A woman was caught making meth inside of a Walmart, while it was open.
Members of Westboro Baptist Church have been specifically banned from entering Canada for hate speech.
Spaghettification is a term specifically used in astrophysics to describe death from falling into a black hole.
Tiny pseudoscorpions (about 4mm) live inside old books, effectively protecting them by eating booklice and dustmites.
A black man in the mid 1960′s, not allowed to join or play at the local country clubs, built his own golf course using his own land and taught the neighborhood kids golf for free.
In 1992, instead of engaging in a messy legal battle over the use of a slogan, the CEOs of Southwest Airlines and Stevens Aviation simply arm-wrestled for whose company would own it.
From 1978 to 2013, CEO compensation in the US, inflation-adjusted, increased 937 percent, and the typical worker’s wages rose 10 percent.
In just two years – 2011 and 2012 – China produced more cement than the US did in the entire 20th century.
1619 - Ferdinand II elected Holy Roman Emperor
1864 - The first Geneva Convention, governing rules of warfare, signed by 26 nations.
1913 - Queen Wilhelmina opens Peace Palace in The Hague
1964 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1968 - Police and anti-war demonstrators clash at Chicago's Demcratic National Convention
2011 - 28th MTV Awards: Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber wins
1592 - George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham/PM (1625-28)
1798 - Gershom Jaques Van Brunt, Comm (Union Navy), died in 1863
1833 - Edward Burne-Jones, England, Pre-Raphaelite painter/designer
1911 - Jose Antonio Giron de Velasco, politician
1931 - John Perkins, rocker (Crew Cuts)
1944 - Melvin Dummar, American claimant to the Howard Hughes estate
1539 - Lieven Pain, Flemish, beheaded at about 75
1968 - John Gordon Mein, US ambassador in Guatemala, dies
1981 - Béla Guttman, Hungarian footballer (b. 1900)
1990 - Willy Vandersteen, Flemish cartoonist (Suske and Wiske), dies
1994 - Jean-Marie Vincent, Haitian pater, murdered
2007 - Antonio Puerta, Spanish footballer (b. 1984)
