In 2000, a convicted murderer on death row's execution was denied because he was "too fat to hang".

In 200 CE, Roman Emperor Septimius Severus banned all female gladiatorial combat, reportedly after hearing such lewd jokes directed at women in an athletic contest that he feared the sport bred disrespect for all women.

The loudest shout ever recorded was by a primary school teacher who yelled ‘quiet!’ It was clocked at 121.7 decibels and the record has stood for 30 years.

The "S" in "Harry S. Truman" wasn't an abbreviation. The dude's middle name was literally just the letter S.

In the Movie "Scream" (1996) there is a section in the credits saying "No Thanks whatsoever to the Santa Rosa city school district governing board" Santa Rosa revoked permissions to film there last minute and cost the production 350,000$.

In world war 2, English soldiers would use passwords that had sounds that the language of the people they where fighting against did not have, so that they could tell if an unidentified person was an enemy soldier tying to infiltrate them by if they said these sounds correctly.

Earth's magnetic field was approximately twice as strong in Roman times as it is now.

During World War II, US comedian Redd Foxx dodged the draft by eating half a bar of soap before his physical, a trick that resulted in heart palpitations.

In 1853, linguist and explorer Richard Francis Burton disguised himself as a Muslim and made the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca which is required of all Muslims. He later wrote a book about his experiences.

Dictator Muammar Gaddafi had a strange obsession with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He had Libya's most famous composer write her a song called "Black Flower in the White House." A photo album full of pictures of her was also found next to his bed by opposition fighters.

US president Benjamin Harrison was widowed while in office in 1892. Four years later, Harrison married his dead wife's niece and had a daughter with her. His adult children who were around 40 years old, were horrified that their father married their cousin and didn't attend the wedding.

Heath Ledger refused to present the Oscars in 2007 after he and Jake Gyllenhaal were asked to make fun of their "Brokeback Mountain" characters' romance.

In China, water is typically drunk hot.

Local Cretan resistance in WWII was so great that civilians would attack Axis paratroopers as they were landing with knives, axes, scythes and even their bare hands.

A 2022 California Supreme Court decision allowed bumble bees to be considered a protected species because they met the state’s legal definition of a “fish”.

There was case in US where a person failed to die during electric chair execution and then his lawyers tried to argue that he was not dead but he had been executed and that it was cruel to go through a second time.

Near the end of her life, Ada Lovelace had a religious transformation and began to repent the conduct of her life. After confessing something to her husband 3 months before her death, he abandoned her bedside. It is not known what she told him.

The reason your mouth may feel gross after eating spinach is due to a chemical reaction called “spinach teeth”.

The air force has a program in place that will keep B-52 bombers flying for over a hundred years since they were manufactured.

There’s a secret material called FOGBANK that is used in nuclear warheads. "The material is classified. Its composition is classified. Its use in the weapon is classified, and the process itself is classified.”