Fun Facts That Are

Skydiver Debbie Williams was knocked unconscious in a midair collision over Arizona in 1987, and loadmaster Gregory Robertson dove after her, knowing he might fall too low to open his own parachute. He reached her in free fall, pulled her reserve ripcord and pushed her clear. Only then did he open his own, about 13 seconds from the ground, and both of them landed alive.

Floodwater covered most of Louisville, Kentucky, in January 1937, and there were not enough boats to rescue everyone downtown. In less than a day, a crew built a floating bridge about 1,800 feet long on empty whiskey barrels. An estimated 75,000 people walked across it to safety over the next four days.

A driverless CSX train rolled out of a Toledo yard in May 2001 with 47 cars, two of them tank cars of molten phenol. Engineer Jess Knowlton and conductor Terry Forson chased it in another locomotive and coupled onto its rear car. They braked it down, and after more than 60 miles trainmaster Jon Hosfeld climbed aboard the slowed engine and shut off its power.

In July 1986 drought left Tom Trantham's 220 dairy cows in South Carolina with no feed. Robert Polley, an Illinois farmer, offered 700 bales, and the oil company Conoco offered two trucks to haul them. Farmers in other states followed, and the Air Force flew in more than 19,000 bales. In 1988 the drought hit the Midwest, and South Carolina began collecting hay for farmers there.

Jeff Daniels grew up in Chelsea, Michigan. His grandfather once ran a car and bus garage there in the early 1900s. In 1989 the Dumb and Dumber star bought that garage and rebuilt it into a theatre that still seats 168. Then he handed the whole building to the nonprofit company he founded there. He still runs it, and he still writes and directs plays on that stage.

Case built nine 150-horsepower steam tractors between 1905 and 1907, and all nine were scrapped. Kory Anderson grew up in Andover, South Dakota, population 91, dreaming of rebuilding one. He copied the factory drawings, had more than 250 parts cast at his foundry and lit its first fire in 2018. It weighs about 37 tons. He brings it back to the Andover show every September and plows with it.

When an ice storm shut down roads across the South in January 2026, Jeep clubs offered nurses free rides to work. In Longview, Texas, six Jeeps and Broncos made more than 200 trips, taking hospital staff to their shifts and home again. Every driver was a volunteer, and the hospital surprised them with gift cards for gas. One East Texas club has done it since the 2021 winter storm.

After the 1900 Galveston hurricane wiped out the strawberry farms on the Texas mainland, Red Cross founder Clara Barton, 78, had her staff ask the growers what they needed. The answer was strawberry plants. Her workers ordered 1.5 million from nurseries in four states, and they were in the ground within two weeks. Pasadena, Texas, still holds a strawberry festival every May.

Tom Cruise jumped from a helicopter with a burning parachute 16 times for Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. Each canopy was soaked in fuel and set alight at least 7,500 feet up. He cut it loose after about three seconds and opened a backup. He was 62, and Guinness made it a world record.

Jay Leno once played two free shows at the Palace of Auburn Hills where the only ticket was being out of work. He announced the first on The Tonight Show, the Pistons donated their arena, and anyone who told the box office they were unemployed could get tickets, 30,000 in all. A month later he did it again in Wilmington, Ohio, a town losing its DHL jobs.

Paul Newman was 70 when the Ford Mustang he shared won its class at the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona. He ran his first pro race at 47, won four national championships and finished second overall at Le Mans in 1979. At Daytona he drove with NASCAR star Mark Martin and two other drivers, days after his 70th birthday. The man who voiced Doc Hudson in Cars really was a race winner.

In a single day in 1952, the people of Moses Lake, Washington, built a whole farm for a stranger. From one minute past midnight, more than 50 tradesmen raised a seven-room house by floodlight while about 100 men on 25 tractors leveled and planted 63.5 acres. By day's end it belonged to Donald Dunn, a WWII tank driver whose Kansas farm a flood had wiped out.