the SEC pays 10-30% of the fine to whistleblowers whose info leads to over $1m fines

Rip was a stray dog adopted by an Air Raid Patrol in WW2. Although not trained for rescue work, he sniffed out over 100 victims trapped beneath buildings. He was awarded the Dickin medal for his work, which has been held partially responsible for prompting the training of search and rescue dogs.

during a preview of the Sistine Chapel paintings, one of the Pope's men criticized all the "disgraceful" nudity. So Michaelangelo painted the critic's likeness into the Last Judgement, wearing nothing but a snake that's biting his d**k.

that scientists trying to study birds in Australia fitted them with tracking harnesses, and the birds helped each other take the harnesses off.

Queen guitarist Brian May uses banjo strings on his electric guitars. Banjo strings are much lighter (thinner) and can bend much easier, making that signature Queen sound.

that 65% of cancer survivors surveyed by 'war on cancer' said that they had been ghosted by friends or family after their diagnosis.

Ronald Reagan started eating Jelly Belly's to quit smoking and kept it up so much that during his terms as President he would have more than 300 thousand jelly beans shipped to the White House each month

the 1993 Chinese film, "An Old Man and his Dog" was banned in its native country for decades due to the discovery that the dog trainer and body double to the lead actor was a serial killer who fed his victims to dogs, including the ones onscreen.

in 2013 in Florida, a sink hole unexpectedly opened up beneath a sleeping man’s bedroom and swallowed him whole. He is presumed dead.

Tasmanian Devils bear up to 50 babies, but only have four nipples. The first four babies that successfully make it from the birth canal into the pouch stand a chance of surviving, while the rest die and are eaten by the mother.

Quaternary Twins are when two babies are both cousins and genetically siblings. This happens when two identical sisters have children with two identical brothers.

that in 2013 a climber found a box full of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds on a remote glacier on Mont Blanc. Authorities determined they were likely from an Indian plane that crashed there in 1966 and gave the climber half the gems (worth $169,000) to reward his honesty in turning them in.

that in New Jersey, it is illegal for criminals to wear a bulletproof vest while committing a crime

that maggot therapy is an FDA approved treatment option for ulcers and wounds to promote healing. Live maggots are placed at the site of injury and eat the necrotic tissue, while also secreting anti-microbial chemicals.

Patricia Stallings was wrongfully convicted for the murder of her infant son under suspicion of antifreeze poisoning before being released due to a biochemist finding that her son had methylmalonic acidemia after hearing about her case on the television series, Unsolved Mysteries.

before Shazam was an app, it was a telephone service which you could call to identify a song. The caller would then get a text message with the song details.

the New Zealand army helped in making the LOTR films by filling as Soldiers and Orcs

Steve Jobs offered Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux a job at Apple under the condition he stopped developing for Linux. He declined the job offer.

about the 1936 presidential election in which Roosevelt received 98.49% of the electoral vote total, which remains the highest percentage of the electoral vote won by any candidate since 1820.

after tigers escaped from a zoo in Georgia and killed a man, advice was issued on what to do if you meet a tiger, including: don’t approach it, don’t run away, and don’t urinate

wolverine was created because Marvel's then editor in chief Roy Thomas wanted a Canadian hero to boost north-of-the-border sales

of the museum infested with the Chilean Recluse spider (Loxosceles laeta), widely considered to be the most venomous of its kind. The museum, Finnish Museum of Natural History, is located in Helsinki & no one is sure how the spider, native to South & Central America, came into the museum.

that in 1933, yo-yos were banned in Syria, because many locals superstitiously blamed the use of them for a severe drought.

the first victim of the Chernobyl disaster was Valery Khodemchuk who died as the reactor exploded, his body was never found and is entombed in the wreckage of the Chernobyl power plant

that Ben Franklin's invention of the lightning rod was blamed by church leaders for the 1755 Cape Ann earthquake off the coast of Colonial Massachusetts — as his "heretical rods" interfered with the "artillery of Heaven" & deprived God of using lightning as "tokens of His displeasure."

that urine comes from your blood, not directly from your digestive system.

that after constantly eat raw beef over a couple of years, a man in China eventually had a 20 foot long tapeworm living in his small intestine, and it turned out that the tapeworm had been inside his small intestines for at least 2 years.

your belly button depth isn’t determined by the cut at birth, but just randomly how your stump heals.

That the skeletons in the pool scene in Poltergeist were real human skeletons.

Matthew McConaughey was first assigned to play Marty Hart in the first season of True Detective. McConaughey asked to switch to Rust Cohle due to the character's obsessive tendencies. McConaughey created a 450-page analysis of Cohle to study the character's evolution in the series.