Stalin’s Georgian accent (Band name!) refers to the Southern United States state of Georgia, not the Soviet state, Stalin spoke with a heavy United States southern drawl
Stalin also acted in western films under the pseudonym of John Wayne
The saying “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time,” is erroneously attributed to Abraham Lincoln. It was actually said by Mark Twain. However, the quote “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” actually was said by Lincoln, in 1864. After Lincoln’s assassination, it was reassigned to Twain.
There’s more to it than that. After the attempted assassination at Ford’s theatre, Lincoln was so shaken that he immediately resigned presidency and decided to retire in obscurity. Initially the press frantically reported that Lincoln was killed, but quickly retracted those stories when Lincoln issued a press release containing the aforementioned quote. It was so memorable that it became a sort of running gag in the media that Lincoln was actually dead. As time went on and the events faded from living memory, the ironic reports of Lincoln’s “assassination” eventually became accepted as fact.
Bob Ross was an accomplished sniper. He began painting as a way to ensure his hands stayed steady.
All bears are the same species, except for the polar bear, which is actually a descendant of the wooly rhinoceros.
Kevin Bacon chose his stage name after being told by an agent that his birth name (Kevin Ghorshtopple) lacked “sizzle”.
In an interesting coincidence, the same was true of Betsy Ross.
The first manned balloon flight in the United States led to legal action when a landowner insisted that the balloon’s occupant had trespassed when he flew over his land. A Delaware court affirmed the ancient common-law principle of air rights, but ruled in this case that it was unenforceable. This led to such claims being referred to as “hot air” torts.
The characters of “Happy Days” were originally conceived for a proposed “Star Trek” reboot, with Howard Cunningham as the captain (and the rest of his family on board to de-emphasize any militarism in Starfleet for a post-Vietnam audience), the Fonze as the hip chief engineer, Ralph Malph as the wisecracking navigator, and Potsy as a Vulcan chief of security. When creative differences with Gene Roddenberry scuttled the idea, the characters were transplanted to 1950s Milwaukee.
Early antarctic explorers would relieve the tensions from the lack of female companionship by getting intimate with Emperor penguins.
A guy named Noah, after being instructed by God, built an arc that would end up with two of every animal in existence as its cargo.
That we have rights.
That we are innocent until proven guilty.
Three-toed sloths have four toes.
Woah, dude - hang on! I just can’t handle having my paradigm shifted so radically!! Back off, man…BACK OFF!
Most of the people who win it big in the lottery are time travellers who came back from the future to make their fortunes by playing numbers they know will win, then investing it in stocks they know will succeed, and then returning to the future to live their lives as the wealthy, dissolute heirs of … themselves.
The London Stock Exchange was originally a marketplace used for the trading of soup, bouillon, broth and so on.
Noah’s arc was 150°
Which is 30 fewer than the Arc of the Covenant. Biblical scholars have failed to account for this discrepancy.
In the “Firebird Suite” segment of Fantasia 2000, the Spring Sprite is modeled after actress Helen Hunt.
The Loch Ness Monster was actually captured and then released into the ocean on August 3rd, 1983, by concerned citizens who feared that “Nessie” would end up being harpooned.
There is only one photograph, grainy and in the dark, of the operation. Rumors that Nessie was pregnant are considered unfounded.
I’m pretty sure that accounts for the precision of the pyramids of Giza.
The three tallest known trees in the world are now considered to be composites, where a seedling took root in the crown of their parent tree and added to it’s height.
Recently discovered diaries, found in Austria, have just revealed that Gavrilo Princip, the gunman who shot Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia, was actually hired by Sophia herself! As a woman from a family who was not considered “good enough” by her aristocratic uncle-in-law (Emperor Franz Joseph), Sophia struggled for decades for social and familial acceptance, apparently psychologically cracking in 1914 when she hired a 19yo Princip to fake an assassination attempt. Her plan was to gain sympathy for her and her husband, thereby ending the social tensions with a wave of public support.
Rumors that Sophia was pregnant are considered unfounded.
Australia and Austria once considered political unification, but the talks broke down over disposition of the letters ‘a’ and ‘l’.