The CIA recruited one of Fidel Castro’s mistresses to kill him in 1960, giving her poison pills, but he found out. Handing her his gun, he dared her to shoot, but her nerves failed and they had sex instead

A drones bees soul purpose is to mate with the queen bee, if they get the chance to mate they die right after. Despite not really doing anything else in the matriarchal hive they are vital for survival of the species

Wayne Gretzky’s stats were so far ahead of his peers’ that if you cut his entire career number in half he’s still one of the top 20 players of all time

David Holmes, Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double for the Harry Potter films was injured in a stunt for the last film and is paralyzed from the chest down

Until the mid-1990s the Italian-American mafia controlled trash collection in New York City, fixing prices by extorting or murdering competitors or requiring them to join the price-fixing cartel. After an undercover operation convicted the leaders, trash collection costs dropped by $600 million

The nurse treating Anthony Perkins for facial palsy secretly took his blood samples and tested them for HIV and it was positive. Anthony didn’t know he had HIV and found out in a grocery checkout line after the nurse shared the results with The National Enquirer

During Germany’s invasion of Russia, Joseph Goebbels sent a plea to the citizens of Germany to send in their winter clothing for the troops. This resulted in many Nazis on the grim Russian front wearing incongruously festive Christmas outfits.

The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902 – The French wanted rats exterminated from the sewer system. They set a bounty for each dead rat tail. Thousands of tails were submitted per day but the rat problem only grew worse. They found the hunters were breeding, not hunting, rats for their tails.

The Kimberly Process, by which diamonds are certified as “conflict-free”, has been largely abandoned as ineffective. Due to corruption and smuggling it is essentially impossible to tell if a gem is a blood diamond or not.

Michael Jackson was a virtuoso composer, despite being unable to read music or play instruments well. He wrote the the parts to his songs by singing and beatboxing into a tape recorder. ““He would sing us an entire string arrangement, every part. Had it all in his head, harmony and everything.”

The city with the highest murder rate in the United States is Jackson, Mississippi; its murder rate is 99 per 100k residents. It’s murder rate ranks 5th highest in the world, alongside cities like Caracas and Tijuana.