U/FroggiJoy87: "In 1978 a dolphin named Mr. Spock at Marine World in the SF Bay Area accidentally ate a bolt when some construction was being done on his tank. Surgery was too risky and it wouldn't be able to be passed, they had to reach in and pull out the bolt. With medical technology being what it was in the 70s, robots weren't an option and a dolphin's esophagus is really long.
Here is where Golden State Warriors player Ray Flipper (love the irony) comes in! Out for the season for injury and with an 8ft wingspan, he was called in, lubed up, and reached down the dolphins' gullet to retrieve the bolt without any further distress to Mr. Spock!"
U/Professional-Tower76: "14 years before the Titanic sank, a fictional story was written by a man named Morgan Robertson. In the story, the ship was described as the largest ever built at the time (same as the Titanic), it was also woefully short on lifeboats, and it also struck an iceberg and sank.
The ship in the story was also a triple screw propeller liner, and it was named the Titan."
U/meatpopsicle42: "The first major troop engagement during the American Civil War — The First Battle of Bull Run — took place on and around the property of Wilmer McLean in Manassas, Virginia, in late July of 1861. After the battle, McLean decided to move about 190 kilometers south to the community of Appomattox Court House, in Appomattox County, also in Virginia.
Nearly four full years later, in April of 1865, a Confederate messenger completely unaware of McLean’s prior ‘involvement’ in the war, knocked on the door of McLean’s new home and asked if Robert E. Lee might use the house on the following day to meet with Ulysses Grant and sign a formal surrender. McLean reluctantly agreed. Some time later, Wilmer McLean is supposed to have said, ‘The war began in my front yard, and ended in my front parlor.’"
U/Semour9: "The siege of Alesia, where Julius Caesar built a wall around the city the gallic defenders were defending from and then built a second wall to keep the gallic reinforcements out.
He and his army just hung out in between the 2 walls and eventually won the battle even though they were technically outnumbered 3 to 1."
U/Spiritual_Minor: "Asbestos was only banned in the UK in 1999. The unbelievable part is - asbestos was known to be dangerous as far back as the ancient Egypt. About 2500/3000 BC. It only took us 4500/5000 years to ban it. The ban on asbestos happened 25 years after the introduction of the health and safety at work regs.
Until then the use of asbestos disproportionately hurt and killed poor people. Not exclusively. But disproportionately. With this new law that could jail people who put their employees at very high risk - the use of asbestos was limited and eliminated."
U/Chickadee12345: "Butterflies and moths start out as eggs. Hatch into caterpillars. Turn themselves into cocoons and then basically turn into mush.
Finally to emerge as an adult butterfly or moth whose main purpose in life is to reproduce and lay more eggs. Yet they can still retain memories from when they were caterpillars."
U/Peter_Parkingmeter: "There is a gene, named after the video game, called the ‘Sonic Hedgehog Gene’. It was then promptly discovered that a disorder of this gene was responsible for horrific birth defects, including holoprosencephaly and facial deformation.
They tend to use the abbreviation when explaining the condition to devastated mothers instead of going the Idiocracy way and coming in like ‘says here on your chart your kid's screw up, that's Sonic for ya.’"
U/MeasurementProper227: "There is a town in Alaska called Talkeetna where a cat named Stubbs served as the honorary mayor for 20 years? Stubbs, a part-Manx cat, was elected as the mayor of Talkeetna in 1997 as a write-in candidate after residents weren't satisfied with the human candidates running for mayor.
Despite not having any official powers, Stubbs became a beloved figure in the town and even attracted tourists who wanted to meet the 'mayor.' Stubbs passed away in 2017 at the age of 20, but his legacy as the honorary mayor of Talkeetna lives on. It's a quirky and heartwarming tale that showcases the unique and sometimes whimsical nature of small-town life."
U/Fish-Foreign: "New Zealand wasn't discovered until about 1300. I'm not talking about Europeans found it. Literally no human found it until about 750 years ago. Over 2 million years of human beings and we found it 750 years ago.
As in the magna carta is older than us finding New Zealand. University of Oxford is older than New Zealand. The first person who found it is closer to now than to Jesus."
U/guesdo: "There is no such thing as an 'alpha' in a wolf pack. The leaders of a pack are almost always the parents, but the person who coined the term studied wolves in captivity where their social interactions were different.
Wolves in the wild do not behave like that. He realized this later and spent most of his career trying to correct people, but it was too late."
