People

Fun facts about people in history and other weird celebrity facts!

WTF Fun Fact 12670 – Thieves Return Plundered Temple Artifacts

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In May 2022, thieves unwisely stole 16 statues of Lord Balaji (an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu). And if you know anything about Vishnu, you’d know that was a particularly bad idea. Vishnu is known as the preserver and protector of the universe, and it is said that he will return to earth in troubled times to restore the balance of good and evil.

However, the belief is that Vishnu has been incarnated 9 times already and his 10th reincarnation will signal the end of the world. So, seriously, do not make him come down here!

Lucky for the rest of us, the thieves got some personal punishment rather than triggering the apocalypse.

Most of the statues were returned a week later to the temple in the Chitrakoot district in Uttar Pradesh, India along with a confession, apology, and plea for forgiveness. It turns out the thieves had been plagued with such terrible nightmares and bad luck during the time they held the statues that they felt they had no choice but to return them and come clean.

“We have been suffering from nightmares since we committed the theft and have not been able to sleep, eat and live peacefully,” the thieves said in the accompanying letter, the Times of India reported (in translation). “We are fed up with the scary dreams and are returning your ‘amaanat’ (valuables).”

Returning stolen temple items is actually somewhat common because of feelings of guilt and misfortune – but, somehow, they still justified keeping two of the stolen items!

Sweet dreams! –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Thieves Return Stolen Treasure To Temple After Being Haunted By Nightmares” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12667 – America’s Oldest Park Ranger

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Betty Reid Soskin retired from a full-time job with the National Park Service just months after celebrating her 100th birthday.

Joining the Park Service at age 85, she started working for them full time in 2011, at age 89 at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, CA. There, she shared her own experiences working on the WWII homefront.

“To be a part of helping to mark the place where that dramatic trajectory of my own life, combined with others of my generation, will influence the future by the footprints we’ve left behind has been incredible,” Soskin said in the NPS’s statement.

According to CNN: “As a park ranger, Soskin led public programs with visitors and shared her own personal experiences of World War II. And she worked to highlight the untold stories of African Americans and other people of color during the war. “Being a primary source in the sharing of  that history — my history — and giving shape to a new national park has been exciting and fulfilling,” said Soskin. “It has proven to bring meaning to my final years.”

Soskin founded one of the first Black-owned music stores, Reid’s Records, with her husband, which was in business for 75 years, before joining the NPS. –  WTF fun fact

Source: “America’s oldest national park ranger retires at age 100” — CNN

WTF Fun Fact 12663 – The Harlem Hellfighters

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Plenty of history buffs think they know all there is to know about WWI, but it’s rare to meet someone who can tell you much about the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment of the New York Army National Guard. Despite facing racism at every turn, they still fought for their country.

They called themselves the “Black Rattlers.” Even the French had a nickname for these brave heroes – the “Men of Bronze.”

Interestingly, it was the name the enemy forces in Germany gave them that stuck – the “Harlem Hellfighters.” They fought in the most hellish places on earth – down in the trenches – and they fought there longer than any American fighters.

And while stories of their heroism spread throughout the world, they were never genuinely rewarded for it. They came home to the same racism they left.

All-Black regiments were rare at the time – the military needed men but was hesitant to work alongside Black men. But New York’s governor at the time, Charles Whitman, agreed to form a unit, something Black political leaders had to fight for! Whitman put them under the command of his former campaign manager and former Nebraska National Guard colonel, William Hayward.

First known as the 5th New York National Guard Regiment, the youngest member was just 16. Hayward recruited both black and white officers to the unit, ensuring the white soldiers were ready to act as teammates, despite the potential for racial tension.

But in the eyes of the larger National Guard, they were not equal. They were given no resources to train with – no uniforms and no weapons. They practiced in their street clothes and with broomsticks.

Then, their real training began at a training ground in the Deep South – the most unfriendly place for Black soldiers, even if they were helping to fight for democracy in the same country as the white soldiers by their sides.

In Spartanburg, South Carolina, they were asked to deal with racism without regard or retaliation as they trained to potentially give their lives. At the same time, the mayor of Spartanburg declared:

“If any of those colored soldiers go in any of our soda stores and the like and ask to be served, they’ll be knocked down. We have our customs down here, and we aren’t going to alter them.”

The unit was forged in the fire of those racist taunts and threats in the Deep South. When they set for Europe in January 1918, they became the 369th Infantry Regiment.

At first, they were given no combat duties, only menial tasks. But the French needed more soldiers. The “Black Rattlers,” as they had named themselves, went into battle under French command and before any white unit, on April 15, 1918. Their heroics earned them accolades in France, including the Croix de Guerre.

There are dozens of stories of their bravery, and more are coming out as historians begin to focus on the evidence of what they ensured. The “Harlem Hellfighters,” as the Germans named them, spent 191 days in combat, which is longer than any other American unit.

But they didn’t all come back alive – over half of them were killed or wounded defending their country. –WTF Fun Facts

Source: “The Story Of The Harlem Hellfighters, The Overlooked Black Heroes Of World War I” — All That’s Interesting

WTF Fun Fact 12662 – Cleopatra Was Not An Egyptian By Birth

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Some think of Cleopatra as the quintessential Egyptian. After all, she ruled for 21 years, and both her skills of seduction and political prowess on behalf of her territory were known throughout the world.

However, Egypt belonged to the empire created by Alexander the Great (who, incidentally, had a sister named Cleopatra) and was subsequently ruled by a family called the Ptolemys. The Ptolemaic dynasty was Macedonian, so while Cleopatra was born in Egypt, she likely had no Egyptian blood.

In the end, her ethnicity makes very little difference other than to note that the Egyptians were not being ruled by their own people at the time. There is at least some slight chance that because the ethnicity of mothers was not recorded after the time of her great-grandfather, Cleopatra could have conceivable had some Egyptian blood in her if she had been born of a concubine to the king. But we will never know for sure. The recorded wives of Macedonian kings were all of Macedonian descent.

Among the many amazing things about the powerful ruler is that Cleopatra was the only ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty ever to bother to learn the Egyptian language.

Cleopatra herself did not maintain the Macedonian bloodline since her children were fathered by two famous Romans, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.

Egypt became part of the Roman Empire shortly after Cleopatra’s death. – WTF Fun Facts

Source: “Cleopatra’s true racial background (and does it really matter?)” — Oxford University Press Blog

WTF Fun Fact 12661 – The Beatles Refuse To Play In Segregated Florida Stadium

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The Beatles had it written into their contract in the 1960s that they would never play in segregated stadiums.

The first time they encountered the problem was in Jacksonville, Florida in 1964 when they found out that their 32,0000-seat show at the Gator Bowl was going to be race-segregated. They said they’d rather lose the money than play for a segregated audience, forcing the city to back off the policy. It was the height of Beatlemania, and the band agreed to play once they desegregated the stadium.

“We never play to segregated audiences and we aren’t going to start now,” said John Lennon. “I’d sooner lose our appearance money.”

But The Beatles didn’t want to have to back out of contracts with the possibility of losing money anymore, so they had it written into their contract that a crowd had to be desegregated for them to play a show and that they would still be paid if they found out at the last minute that the city hadn’t heeded this obligation. – WTF Fun Facts

Source: “The Beatles banned segregated audiences, contract shows” — BBC News

WTF Fun Fact 12660 – America’s First Female Mayor

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America’s first woman mayor was put on the ballet by the men in Argonia, Kansas to run for the Prohibition Party.

Susanna Kinsey’s family came to Kansas from Kentucky. There, she met her husband Lewis Salter while attending the Kansas State Agricultural College. The couple moved to Argonia where they raised a family and Susanna became an officer in the local Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

As a joke, the men in her town added her name to the ballot in 1887 for mayor and probably regretted their decision when she surprised them by winning 2/3 of the vote. They may have thought the joke was clever, but they were not. Women had earned the right to vote in city elections that very same year.

The other thing Argonia men failed to realize about Salter was that at 27, she actually had a lot of knowledge about politics. She was the daughter of the town’s very first mayor and the daughter-in-law of Kansas’ former lieutenant governor.

Salter performed her duties but never sought elected office. –  WTF fun facts

Source: “Susanna Madora Salter” – Kansapedia

WTF Fun Fact 12657 – Daniel Gossett’s Hair Story

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On August 1, 2018, pitcher Daniel Gossett of the Oakland A’s shaved his head following Tommy John surgery. The recovery after this kind of surgery is very lengthy, and Gossett knew his arm would be immobile for a while.

“I was in an arm brace for however many weeks,” Gossett told MassLive. “I was like, ‘Man, I can’t do anything with this hair.’ So I cut it all off.”

However, as baseball players (especially pitchers) are known for their rituals and superstitions, Gossett has decided not to cut it again. At least not for a while.

He was released by the A’s in 2020, but seeing his promise, another team snatched him up. In 2021, he was signed by the Boston Red Sox and played in their minor league system. Pitchers have to work their way back up to the major league teams.

It was at that time that Gossett made the decision not to cut his hair until he was back on a major league team – no matter how long it took.

And it’s taking a while!

The Red Sox released him as well (at the end of 2021). But he didn’t spend long as a free agent. In 2022, the Minnesota Twins signed him to their minor league team.

Now, we’ll have to wait and see how long it takes for him to work his way up, but his hair is still growing – many inches down his back, in fact.

Luckily, it’s healthy, beautiful blond hair and he’s promised to donate it when the time comes.

 – WTF Fun Facts

Source: “Meet Daniel Gossett: Boston Red Sox depth starter lives in RV, won’t cut long hair until he returns to big leagues or he can donate it” — MassLive

WTF Fun Fact 12653 – The Amazing Nellie Bly

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Nellie Bly was one of the first female investigative journalists. The daughter of a county judge, she was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran. But she borrowed the name Nellie Bly from an American minstrel song because women never wrote under their real names.

Bly searched for a job for months in NYC before sneaking into The New York World’s headquarters to pitch a story.

In order to inform Americans about the horrific conditions inside the country’s psychiatric hospitals (called “insane asylums” at the time), she volunteered to become a patient on the condition that The World would send a lawyer to get her out after ten days.

Her riveting account was the beginning of investigative journalism, and her book Ten Days in a Mad-House was widely read and awarded.

But she didn’t rest on her laurels after that. Instead, her next project was to travel around the world in 72 days (in 1889-1890, so there were no airplanes!) with just one bag. Of course, this was designed to challenge Phileas Fogg’s Around the World in 80 Days.

After her successful and highly-publicized trips, the papers called her the “best-known and most widely talked of woman on earth.”

At age 50, she reported from the front lines in Austria during WWI, interviewing soldiers on the battlefield and in the trenches.

While she married a millionaire, she ended up buried in a pauper’s grave after dying of pneumonia at age 57. That’s because she spent all of her time and money helping people out of poverty. In 1978, the New York Press Club funded a small and simple headstone with her name in New York’s Woodlawn Cemetery. However, today, she also has a memorial on Roosevelt Island, the site of the asylum where she did the first investigative work that made her famous. – WTF Fun Facts

Source: “10 Facts About Nellie Bly” — History Hit

WTF Fun Facts 12645 – The Legacy of Hanns Scharff

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We don’t think of any interrogators as being friendly, much less those used by the Nazis during WWII. But Prussian-bornHanns Scharff became a master interrogator by using an overwhelmingly successful technique that involved using kindness to win the trust of the soldiers he was asked to get information from.

Scharff was due to be sent to the front lines, but shortly before it happened, the Nazis decided that he would be an asset in interrogation because he knew English. He interrogated over 500 prisoners during his service and only failed a couple of dozen times.

Scharff became known internationally, and because he wasn’t considered a war criminal, he wasn’t tried at Nuremberg. In fact, he was able to come to the US in 1948 instead if he agreed to interrogate and testify at the trial of the Air Force pilot Martin J. Monti, who defected to Germany in 1944 and became a Nazi propagandist.

Once in the US, Scharff even met up with some of the men he interrogated in German prisons!

Eventually, Scharff was able to return to his original career as an artist, and more specifically, a mosaic artist and furniture maker. His mosaics can be found in countless government buildings, hotels, colleges, and even Disney World. He created the mosaic at Cinderella’s castle as well as ramps into Epcot Center.

He died in 1992, but his “Scharff Technique” is still taught in the US military. –WTF fun facts

Source: “Hanns Scharff; Creator of L.A., State Capitol Mosaics” — LA Times

WTF Fun Fact 12643 – The First Sad Clown

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Joseph Grimaldi is often hailed as the first modern “clown.” And while people tend to break down into two camps – those who find them funny and those who find them terrifying – Grimaldi’s story is proof that they’ve always been both.

Joseph Grimaldi had a long and illustrious career marked by extreme emotional outbursts. And one of the reasons we know so much about him is because of his well-written biography – by none other than a young newspaper writer named Charles Dickens.

Dickens gave readers some insight into the brutality of Grimaldi’s upbringing, and in particular, his treatment by his father, Guiseppe, a dentist and performer who moved from Italy to England for a career change.

Abusive to all of his children, he capped off his life by demanding that his daughter cut off his head before he was buried in order to receive her inheritance, all because he was terrified of being buried alive.

He wasn’t any more pleasant to his other nine children either, but only Joseph grew up and created the character of the modern clown. While he gave his all on stage, he would often burst into hysterics between acts and pull himself together just in time to entertain during the second act.

When trying to treat his intractable melancholy, he visited a doctor who had an even more depressing prescription: “relaxation and amusement… perhaps sometimes at the theater;—go and see Grimaldi.”

“Alas!” he shouted, ‘”hat is of no avail to me; I am Grimaldi.” –WTF fun facts

Source: “Here We Are Again!—How Joseph Grimaldi Invented the Creepy Clown” — JSTOR Daily

WTF Fun Fact 12640 – A Presidential Wild Child

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Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth, the eldest child of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, was apparently quite a hoot.

Her mother died just days after she was born, and she was initially raised by her aunt, Anna Roosevelt. But when her father remarried in 1886, she was sent to live with the family and her five half-siblings.

She was intelligent and bold and happy to be in the spotlight as a celebrity first daughter. She made news for such antics as smoking on the White House roof and carrying a pet snake named Emily Spinach in her handbag, sometimes taking her out and wearing the snake around her arm. She also publicly bet on sports races, something ladies of the stature didn’t do at the time.

It appears that her parent wanted to do something about her behavior but felt unable to do so since she was such a darling of the press.

Later in life, she became a political power of her own, marrying a Republican representative from Ohio, but they argued over her support of her father’s Progressive Party politics. However, Alice also wrote a newspaper column condemning some of those, including Rosevelt’s response to The Great Depression. Alice was also vocal in protesting the U.S.’s participation in the League of Nations and had isolationist tendencies – at least up until Pearl Harbor drew the country into WWII.

She was at the center of Washington society for decades after that, hosting the Kennedys, Nixons, and Johnsons.

After having a double mastectomy later in life, she insisted on referring to herself as “Washington’s only topless octogenarian.”

Those who joined her for tea would catch a glimpse of a pillow that read, “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”

Alice Roosevelt died at age 96 in 1980. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Alice Roosevelt Longworth” — Theodore Roosevelt Center

WTF Fun Fact 12635 – A Pre-Raphaelite “Supermodel”

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Elizabeth “Lizzie” SiddaI wasn’t beautiful by conventional 19th-century standards. Tall, thin, and red-headed, she worked in a hat factory, making her pale skin and gauntness even more striking. She wouldn’t have been noticed as beautiful at the time except that she caught the eye of Walter Howell Deverell in the winter of 1849. He was a member of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters trying to bring back Renaissance traditions.

It turns out all of the painters all found her to be a perfect muse. Siddal eventually became a member of the Pre-Raphaelite movement herself as an artist and poet.

Being an artist’s model was a scandalous profession at the time, but it was Deverell’s wealthy mother who arrived to ask Siddal’s mother for permission for her son to paint her. Apparently agreeing that it was a safer profession, she was allowed to model part-time.

Deverell painted her as Viola in Twelfth Night, Holman Hunt painted her for A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Priest from the Persecution of the Druids (1850), and Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted her for the first time in 1850 in Rossovestita. Siddal and Rossetti eventually got engaged, and he painted her thousands of times, even becoming jealous and refusing to let others paint her after a while.

According to Siddal’s biographer Lucinda Hawksley:

“Although today Lizzie Siddal’s willowy build, gaunt features and lustrous copper-coloured hair are considered signs of beauty, in the 1850s being very thin was not considered sexually attractive, and red hair was described by one female journalist as “social suicide”. Through her modelling work and the success of the paintings she appeared in, Lizzie helped change the public opinion of beauty.”

Siddal became most famous as the muse for Millais’s Ophelia. –WTF fun facts

Source: “The tragedy of art’s greatest supermodel” — BBC Culture

WTF Fun Fact 12632 – The Oldest Tattoo Artist

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Buscalan Village, Kalinga, is in the north of the Philippines, and despite having no cell or internet service, it’s an incredibly popular tourist destination. That’s because people make pilgrimages of a sort to see a 105-year-old tattoo artist named Fang-od Oggay. She’s been practicing her native province’s tribal tattooing method.

According to Atlas Obscura, “She is known worldwide as a living legend and the last tribal tattoo artist to hold the title of Mambabatok—the name given to traditional tattooists by the Kalinga ethnic group for thousands of years.”

Oggay is the master of the technique, an art that used to belong only to men. But seeing her talent at an early age, her father taught her the technique at age 15, and she’s been tattooing ever since. She’s at the head of a movement to keep the Butbut tribe’s tradition of hand-tap tattooing alive. And all of her apprentices are females.

Oggay uses citrus thorned to prick the skin. They come from either calamansi or a pomelo tree branch and get threaded into a bamboo reed. The ink is made of charcoal and water and wiped onto the thorn, which is tapped into the skin using a 12-inch bamboo hammer.

That’s pretty hardcore.

But the tattoos used to be for Butbut tribal head-hunters and male warriors as a symbol of their bravery. The more tattoos, the more heads you had taken in war, so a warrior’s goal would often be to have their entire bodies tattooed. The last warrior to get such a tattoo got his in 2002. Times have changed.

But Oggay is still tattooing. Head-hunting might not be a socially acceptable behavior anymore, but that doesn’t mean the tattoo art should fade away. But the tradition will be carried on by women.

Atlas Obscura says: “Oggay was the first female tattoo artist in Kalinga. But she may not be the last Mambabatok. Over time there has been a shift, with young women taking up the ancient tradition. Through tattooing, they are economically supporting the whole village.”

–WTF fun facts

Source: “A 105-Year-Old Tattoo Artist Is Teaching Girls to Ink for Independence” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 12630 – Jack Ryan, Missile and Doll Engineer

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In his relatively short life (he died at just 65), engineer Jack W. Ryan designed and co-designed quite a few things that changed the world. That includes such dissimilar things as Raytheon’s Sparrow and Hawk missiles, Barbie, and Chatty Cathy.

According to a biography and an exposé on Mattel written after his death, he was also surrounded by scandal and just generally not a wholesome guy. That’s hard to put aside since some of that may have influenced his career trajectory, but it’s still the case that he played a significant role in both military technology and the toy company Mattel. Which is kind of weird, right?

As vice president of research and design (and later a consultant) for Mattel Inc., he helped design Hot Wheels as well. But when it came to Barbie, it was his unique engineering that helped seal the deal – he’s the reason she can bend her legs and turn her arms. It is, ahem, probably worth noting that Mattel was sued over the design because Ryan “borrowed” it from a German “adult” doll called Bild-Lilli. He knew he had to make it less provocative, but it does explain a bit about why Barbie might look so…adult.

Of course, let’s not forget that the IDEA for Barbie belongs to Ruth Handler, the president of Mattel. She was the one who came up with the idea of a 3-dimensional life-like doll for kids. She was also once indicted for influencing the company’s stock price too, so let’s just say that toy companies aren’t the best place to let your children hang out. Stick to the toy stores. –WTF fun facts

Source: “JACK RYAN DIES; BARBIE DOLL AND MISSILE INVENTOR” — The Buffalo News

WTF Fun Fact 12627 – The Face of Resusci Annie

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If you ever learned CPR, there’s at least a fair chance that you learned it using a life-sized mannequin called Rescue Annie (aka Resusci Anne, L’Inconnue de la Seine (Unknown Woman of Seine), the Mona Lisa of Seine, and The Most Kissed Girl in the World). We use these large dolls so that we don’t have to practice on each other, which is a good thing since CPR can result in broken ribs.

While we never really thought about how she got her face, 2 dental students in the UK decided to do some research a few years back and find out just how Rescue Annie got made. And the answers are creepier than we could have imagined.

The face of Annie is the death mask of a woman who drowned and was never identified.

In the late 19th century, the body of a girl was pulled out of the River Seine in Paris. An examination of her face led to guesses that she was roughly 16 years old, but no one could identify her.

The body was put on public display in the hopes that someone could identify here, which was common practice at the time (and a popular attraction). People were more than a little curious about the placid-looking teen, who came to be known as “L’Inconnue de la Seine (the Unknown Woman of the Seine).” 

The pathologist who performed the girl’s autopsy had a model maker create a death mask for her. It was a plaster cast tmade by Lorenzi model makers, the same people who eventually decided the mask was too good not to be shared, so they replicated it in bulk and sold copies. You can still purchase “Noyée [Drowned Woman] de la Seine” from them.

So how did a death mask come to be the face of a CPR doll? Well, in the 1950s when Archer Gordon decided to make a CPR dummy for medical students to practice on, he called on toymaker Åsmund Laerdal, who had seen a copy of the mask and decided to use it for the face.

The website calls her Resusci Anne, a name that just somehow stuck. The company estimates that roughly 300 million people have laid their lips on a version of the doll to learn mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Another fun fact? Michael Jackson’s line “Annie are you okay?” in the song “Smooth Criminal“ is an homage to the doll. In CPR training, trainees are told to check for a response in the patient by asking “Annie are you okay.”  – WTF fun facts

Source: “How a girl’s ‘death mask’ from the 1800s became the face of CPR dolls” — Live Science

WTF Fun Fact 12626 – Joseph Ducreux’s “Meme” Paintings

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The painting by Joseph Ducreux that you may have seen in memes is a legit 18th-century painting titled Self-Portrait in the Guise of a Mocker. It happens to be a self-portrait and a rather unique style. At the time, paintings took enormous time to make, so goofy “selfies” might have seemed a waste.

However, Ducreux was keenly interested in the pseudoscience of physiognomy, the attempt to assess a person’s character from their facial features and expressions. Hence the interesting poses he struck in his self-portraits.

But Joseph Ducreux was a skilled oil painter. A miniature of Marie Antoinette he made in 1789 won him a baronetcy and the title of “First Painter to the Queen” of France.

Of course, his place in high society made him unpopular during the French Revolution, so he hid out in London for a bit. That’s where he created the last portrait of Kind Louis XVI before the royal was beheaded.

He returned to France after the revolution and continued his career as a painter, indulging in the self-portrait series at the time.

They may look silly, but to Ducreux, they served a scientific purpose. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Quirky Self-Portraits of 18th Century Painter Joseph Ducreux” — Open Culture

WTF Fun Fact 12624 – The Night Mower

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Edwin Bearn Budding is the inventor of the lawnmower. It’s a bit hard to imagine a world without lawns (though we’ve heard they’re not so great for the environment) and the people who take pride in them. In fact, the average American spends 4 hours a week taking care of their lawn.

But at first, Budding wasn’t so sure about his contraption. The year was 1830, and no one technically had a lawn to be mowed. Naturally, he figured people would make fun of him for the invention. And perhaps they would have.

Budding was so self-conscious about the invention that he would only test out his lawnmower prototypes at night, under cover of darkness, so his neighbors couldn’t see him. Of course, these were manual mowers, so they didn’t have the tell-tale engines that let us know when our neighbor is mowing today, though his machine was reportedly pretty noisy.

Most inventors seem pretty stoked about their creations, but perhaps Budding was just humble. While he was born the illegitimate son of a farmer, he got an education that led him to an interest in technical matters. He became a pattern maker at an iron foundry, then a machinist at a cotton mill.

Before his lawnmower, he also invented a pistol more sophisticated than a Colt, but it appears Colt’s 1836 patent won out in the end.

Budding’s lawnmower was conceived of during his time in the cotton mills, and in many ways, it mimics the movements of a napping machine, which uses blades to trim off long fibers from cloth evenly and efficiently.

The wrought iron machine had adjustable blades and was pushed from behind while a tray collected clippings at the front. (Frankly, it sounds better than some of the manual push mowers around today.)

After the patent, Budding went into business with John Ferrabee, who owned Phoenix Iron Works, so the machine could be mass-produced and sold (after all, you don’t get anything from just inventing something). Things went well for the pair, and a few years later, they were attracting buyers across England, selling 1000 machines by 1840.

Budding died of a stroke in 1846, so he never got to see how his invention changed people’s lives. It was used to care for sports fields and public parks, improve gardens, and cut down on manual labor on farms (a scythe or a grazing animal was your only choice before the lawnmower).

It also created a whole new class of gardeners and groundsmen who used it to create gardens as status symbols. A bit later, they were explicitly marketed to women as a fashionable way to get exercise.

We’ve come a long way since then (for better or worse), but it’s incredible to think it all started with one man mowing his lawn in the dark. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Budding Lawn Mowers” — The Daily Gardener

WTF Fun Fact 12623 – Is There A Doctor In The House?

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We’re not sure whether to call Dorothy Fletcher lucky or not. After all, she suffered a heart attack in the middle of a transatlantic flight from Manchester to Florida on November 7, 2009. That’s unfortunate. But, on the other hand, there were 15 cardiologists on board when it happened.

When the stewardess asked if there were any doctors on board, the 15 experts volunteered their service.

Well, they didn’t just wait around to be called on, rather the story seems to claim they all ran to her side to try and help. Using an onboard medical kit, they were able to control the heart attack, save her life, and get a drip into her arm.

Later, she said:

“I couldn’t believe what happened. All these people came rushing down the aircraft towards me. The doctors were wonderful. They saved my life. My daughter was with me and you can imagine how she felt when all these doctors stood up. I wish I could thank them but I have no idea who they were, other than that they were going to a conference in Orlando.”

The plane had to be diverted to North Carolina so that the 67-year-old could get immediate hospital care

Mrs. Fletcher was treated in the intensive care unit at Charlotte Medical Centre and stayed for two days. She had been traveling to attend her daughter’s wedding. And she did make it to the nuptials on time the following week in Lake Berkeley, Kissimmee. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Heart Attack Woman On Plane – 15 Cardiologists On Board” — Medical News Today