1. In 1963, Alfred Heineken created a beer bottle that could also function as a brick to build houses in impoverished countries.
2. Pet Rock was so popular in the 70’s that the creator became a multimillionaire about 6 months after marketing it.
3. Oxford University is so old, one of its constituent colleges called “New College” was established in 1379.
4. Jack Nicholson was brought up believing that his mother was his sister and his grandparents were his parents. For 37 years.
5. After an Ethiopian girl was kidnapped, three lions chased off the kidnappers and stayed with her until police arrived, leaving her unharmed.
6. There is an organization called Engineers Without Borders that works to improve infrastructure and engineering practices in developing countries.
7. Koko the gorilla met Robin Williams in 2001, and he made her smile for the first time in over 6 months. When Williams died in 2014, Koko overheard the news and signed the word “cry.”
8. When John D. Rockefeller died in 1937, his assets equaled 1.5% of America’s total economic output. Bill Fates is about .38% today.
9. An elephant in India, while helping villagers lift logs, refused to lower a log into a certain hole, because a dog was sleeping in it. Only after the dog was chased away would the elephant lower the log into the hole.
10. 29 bars in NJ were caught serving things like rubbing alcohol and food coloring as scotch and dirty water as liquor.
11. There’s a café in France, which charges €7 a coffee to rude customers and €1.40 to people who talk politely to the staff.
12. The deadliest sniper from WW2, with 542 confirmed kills, didn’t use a telescopic sight (Simo Hayha).
13. German footballer Mesut Ozil donated his €300,000 World Cup victory bonus to pay for the surgeries of 23 children in Brazil.
14. Charles Rigoulot, a French weightlifter, was jailed for hitting a Nazi guard, but broke out of his jail cell by bending the bars. He allowed other prisoners to escape as well. Then beat the guard who jailed him.
15. When a Virginia school board tried to ban “To Kill a Mockingbird” as immoral, author Harper Lee wrote a letter asking if the board members were literate and donated money to enroll them in the first grade.