ABC hosted a gameshow in the 1950’s called Do You Trust Your Wife? Married couples were asked a series of questions but only the husbands were told the category of the upcoming question and would then have to decide whether to answer the question themselves or “trust” their wives to answer. – WTF Fun Facts
History
Weird history facts all gathered right here under our history category. Once you have had your fill of history facts head over to our random fact generator to learn more random factoids!
WTF Fun Fact – Dead Snail In A Beer
Modern negligence law is a result of the 1932 court case Donoghue v Stevenson in Scotland, where Mrs. Donoghue sued Mr. Stevenson after drinking a bottle of ginger beer with a dead snail in it and becoming ill. – WTF Fun Facts
WTF Fun Fact – Chrysler’s Corinthian Leather
In the 1970’s, Chrysler advertised their luxury cars as containing ‘Corinthian leather’ with Ricardo Montalbán as the spokesman. On Late Night with David Letterman, Montalbán playfully admitted that the term meant nothing. The leather was actually sourced from New Jersey. – WTF Fun Facts
WTF Fun Fact – No Elephants For US
President Abraham Lincoln had to write a letter to the King of Thailand politely declining his gift of elephants and stating his preference to use steam engines instead.–WTF Fun Facts
WTF Fun Fact – Bamboo Covered Taj Mahal
During World War 2, the Taj Mahal’s dome was covered with bamboo scaffolding by the British government to make it difficult for German and Japanese bombers to identify it.–WTF Fun Facts
Source:https://www.outlookindia.com/outlooktraveller/travelnews/story/69399/the-taj-mahal-under-camouflage
WTF Fun Fact – Assassination Finally A Federal Crime
Despite the assassinations of three US Presidents, (Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and William McKinley) killing or attempting to harm a President wasn’t a federal crime until 1965, two years after JFK’s death. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/20/us/jfk-assassination-5-things/index.html
WTF Fun Fact – Pepsi’s Navy
In the late 1980’s, Pepsi briefly owned 17 diesel submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer, all because of a $3 billion trade agreement with the USSR in which they exchanged soda for military equipment. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://www.redkalinka.com/Russian-Blog/78/_The-day-Pepsi-became-a-great-military-power/
WTF Fun Fact – How Scribes Vent
Medieval scribes would frequently scribble complaints in the margins of books as they tediously copied them. Examples include “As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe” or “Let me now be blamed for the script, for the ink is bad, and the vellum defective, and the day is dark.” – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/the-humorous-and-absurd-world-of-medieval-marginalia
WTF Fun Fact – The Mad Dane
Thor Christiansen was a serial killer who was only caught because his fifth would-be victim survived a gunshot to the head and escaped his vehicle. She recognized him months later in a bar and reported him to police who then linked him with four other then-unsolved murders. – WTF Fun Facts
WTF Fun Fact – Bulgarian Umbrella
A Bulgarian Umbrella is an umbrella with a hidden pneumatic mechanism which injects a small poisonous pellet containing ricin. It is named as such because the Bulgarian secret service used it to assassinate a Bulgarian dissident writer in 1978. – WTF Fun Facts
WTF Fun Fact – Aeroflot Flight 6502
In 1986, Soviet pilot Alexander Kliuyev made a bet with his co-pilot that he could land Aeroflot Flight 6502 using an instrument-only approach with curtained cockpit windows (no visual contact with the ground.) The plane ultimately crashed and 70 people died. – WTF Fun Facts
WTF Fun Fact – Good Vibes Cost A Fortune
The Beach Boys song “Good Vibrations” used 90 hours of tape from 17 separate recording dates with LA’s top sessioneers. The cost of recording was estimated to be over $50,000, or roughly half a million adjusted for inflation. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/the-making-of-the-beach-boys-good-vibrations-34867/
WTF Fun Fact – Play-Doh Wallpaper Cleaner
Play-Doh was not intended as a children’s toy at first. It was originally sold to help remove coal residue from wallpaper. When sales fell after WWII, it was remarketed as the toy modelling clay product known today. – WTF Fun Facts
WTF Fun Fact – Ship-Salvage Lobbyists
In the 1800’s, the ship-salvage industry lobbied against early weather forecasting which resulted in the suspension of weather forecasts and storm warnings. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/writers-in-the-storm
WTF Fun Fact – Ancient Slingshot Bullets
Archaeologists have found slingshot “bullets” from 4th Century BC Greece engraved with the Greek word “ΔΕΞΑΙ”, which translates to “take that!” or “catch!” – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1851-0507-11
WTF Fun Fact – Weeper
A “weeper” is a piece of fabric wrapped around a hat or bicep of an undertaker or mourner. – WTF Fun Facts
WTF Fun Fact – Order of the Pug
Roman Catholics in Bavaria founded a secret society in 1740 called the ‘Order of the Pug’. For initiation, new members had to wear dog collars and scratch at the door to get in. Established members would then bark at them while they were blindfolded and led around the room. – WTF Fun Facts
WTF Fun Fact – Purple Heart
Before Japan surrendered to end WW2, the US armed forces ordered 1.5 million Purple Heart medals in anticipation of a difficult land invasion. Roughly 500,000 were left after WW2, and that stock, although refurbished, is still likely being used today. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/purple-heart-stockpile-wwii-medal.html