a defibrillator doesn't restart a stopped heart. In fact quite the opposite, it actually stops a heart in the middle of a cardiac event, allowing the heart’s natural back-up system to take over and return it to normal sinus rhythm.

Goku from DBZ in Japan is voiced by an 84 year old woman, who holds world records for her long-running voice acting career

British banknotes increase in size as they increase in value to help blind people tell them apart

in the anatomy building at Dalian Medical University, where medical student can practice on cadavers, there's a sign with a quote from a donor that reads "I’d rather let students try something 20 times on me than see them make one mistake on a future patient.”

that in 1524, a statue of the Virgin Mary at the Cathedral in Riga, Latvia, was accused of being a witch. They put it on trial by throwing it in the river. Since the wooden statue floated, they declared it guilty and burned it.

in 1948, Milwaukee burger chain George Webb’s said they would give free hamburgers if the local baseball team won 12 games in a row. Since then it’s only happened twice: in 1987, and 2018. They honored the promise and gave out hundreds of thousands of free burgers.

about the Tarantula Hawk, which has a sting that causes "...immediate, excruciating, unrelenting pain that simply shuts down one's ability to do anything, except scream."

that FDR's White House served notoriously terrible meals. First Lady Eleanor wanted to set an example for the country during the Depression by serving economical meals made from scraps

that in 1929, determined to prove his hypothesis, Werner Frossman tricked a nurse, inserted a catheter through his own arm, and walked with the inserted tube to an x-ray lab to photograph his discovery, thereby inventing cardiac catheterization and winning a Nobel Prize for it later.

that in the 1890s, X-Rays were used extensively as entertainment. People could even buy or build their own X-ray apparatus for use at home. Many who popularized the technology developed cancer, suffered amputations, or died.

a legend goes that during the Thirty Years' War, a Catholic army wanted to destroy Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany for resisting the Count of Tilly. Tilly declared that if anyone could drink a 3.25 L drink of wine in one go, he would spare the town. The local mayor saved the town that day.

that some hikers and researchers have spotted wild birds swearing. It is belived that birds that escaped from captivity teach other wild birds how to speak and swear in English.

Graça Machel was married to the President of Mozambique until he died in a plane crash, she later married Nelson Mandela while he was President of South Africa. She is the only person in modern history to be First Lady of two different countries.

that American surgeon William Beaumont, the "Father of Gastric Physiology", researched human digestion by putting pieces of food on a string and poking them through an old gunshot wound in his handyman's stomach. He pulled it out on regular intervals to check on how well it had been digested.

that energy consumption in the UK is around the same as the 1970s, due to more efficient appliances and domestic solar technology

as a prank, a man once climbed Mount Hood in the middle of the night and surreptitiously left a morning newspaper and a quart of milk for his friends, who were spending the night on the summit

nearly all French wine grapes are grown on vines grafted to root stock from Missouri. in the 1860s, phylloxera bugs threatened to destroy the vineyards, but roots from the US were resistant. Hundreds of thousands were shipped in and used to save the French vines.

capybaras, the largest extant rodent, have adapted well to urbanization in South America, and they can be found in many urban parks and lakes. Capybaras are quite docile and often allow humans to pet them though it is discouraged as the mammals' ticks can carry the Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Bears in Yellowstone can eat up to 40,000 moths a day

of "Psychogenic death" - when a person gives up on life mentally and dies usually within days. The phenomenon occurs when someone experiences a trauma they feel they cannot escape, and the person views death as their only option.

that home teams in basketball wear white uniforms because the home team had access to laundry facilities. By wearing grey or another dark color the visiting team was better able to conceal the stains that had accumulated on their uniforms over the course of the series.

in 2018, an electrical engineer on board the Bellingshausen Research station in Antartica stabbed a fellow coworker in the chest multiple times because the colleague had been giving away the endings of books available in the research station’s library.

of "Janet" Airlines, a secret, full-service airline that carries military and contractor employees to sites such as Area 51.

Before elevators, the 2nd floor of buildings were the most sought after because you didn't have to walk up a lot of stairs and you were above the street level, avoiding all the noises and smells. It's why a lot of older buildings have larger/nicer rooms on the second floor.

30 years ago a tank crushed a small red car in Osijek, Croatia, as a show of force. In 2011 a monument was built: a tiny red car, crushing a tank.

it is quite common for older homes to have piles of razor blades in their walls.

about Acclimatisation Societies. Groups of people from the 19th century that would purposely introduce exotic species to new places. They are responsible for massive ecological disasters.

when the UN's Nordic Battalion was sent to Bosnia in 1993 it disobeyed orders, broke rules of engagement, faked loss of communication to HQ, and became known as one the most trigger-happy peacekeeper units. This enabled them to achieve their mission objective: to protect civilians at all cost.

That Japan has so many "ghost houses" that they are commonly given away at low/no-cost

that forest fires in Germany can detonate unexploded bombs left from WWII, putting firefighters at risk