Fun Facts That Are

Those little boxes of books on posts across America started as one man's tribute. Todd Bol built the first in 2009, from wood off his old garage door. He shaped it like a tiny schoolhouse, for his mother, June. She was a schoolteacher who tutored neighborhood kids at her dining table. He filled it with books and staked it in his yard. Neighbors wanted their own. There are now over 200,000, in 128 countries. There's probably one on your street.

Washington Crossing the Delaware is the 1851 painting almost every American studied in school. It shows Washington's gamble on Christmas night, 1776, crossing an icy river to attack Trenton. Every Christmas Day, hundreds of costumed reenactors gather at Washington Crossing Historic Park in Pennsylvania. They row replica Durham boats across the river, if conditions are safe. This December is the 74th crossing.

Half Dome is the granite dome in Yosemite that looks impossible to climb without ropes. It isn't. Every spring, a park crew hauls two steel cables up its steepest stretch. Every fall, they take them down. In between, permit holders haul themselves up hand over hand to the summit. Up to 300 people go up on any given day. The cables are up right now. Hikers are climbing them this week.

Art Ingels built Indy 500-winning race cars at Kurtis Kraft. In 1956 he welded scrap tubing into a chassis in his Echo Park garage, bolted on a surplus West Bend engine, and brought it to the Rose Bowl parking lot. Other racers followed with homemade karts of their own. He is credited with building the first go-kart. One of karting's biggest US races still runs on a track across a parking lot, in Las Vegas.

Shaquille O'Neal has quietly rebuilt basketball courts for 30 years. The first was in Orlando, where Marquis Daniels grew up. Daniels made the NBA and told O'Neal: "Because you fixed it up, I'm here." O'Neal has since rebuilt six more courts - he's still doing it, one court at a time.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall gets washed by hand. Vietnam veterans get down on the granite and scrub it themselves, with buckets, soft brushes and a hose. Their group, Chapter 641, started the ritual in 1996, and through 2026 that is 31 seasons of vets and volunteer groups washing the stone together. The wall carries 58,281 names. They are still out there scrubbing it, every warm season.

A timber beetle larva was gnawing through a tree stump. Its jaws curled left, then right, in alternating C-shaped bites. Oregon logger Joe Cox stopped to watch it in 1946. He spent that summer in his basement copying the shape into steel. The first Cox Chipper Chain sold in 1947. That idea became the basis of modern saw chain, still widely used today. Look at your own chain: the cutters still alternate left, right, left.

Creed Bratton played a character on The Office named after himself. Off screen, he was the real lead guitarist of The Grass Roots. He toured with the band from 1967 to 1969. The band had two gold records. "Let's Live for Today" hit No. 8. "Midnight Confessions" was their biggest hit, at No. 5. His character's real name was later revealed as William Schneider, his actual birth name. He's still touring today, at 83.

The Mackinac Bridge is Michigan's five-mile 'Mighty Mac.' Every day, only cars are allowed on it. Except one: every Labor Day, Michigan closes it to cars and opens it to walkers. The first walk, in 1958, drew just 68 people. For decades, two lanes stayed open to cars during the walk. Since 2017, all of them close, and walkers get the whole bridge to themselves. Now 40,000 to 65,000 show up every year, with a record 85,000 in one morning.

The Pony Express lasted only 18 months before the telegraph replaced it in 1861. But volunteers never let it end. Every June, more than 750 riders saddle up for the Pony Express Re-Ride, carrying real, postmarked mail 1,966 miles across eight states from Missouri to California in ten days, day and night. Riders still gallop the trail, passing the mail pouch horse to horse, just like 1860.

NASA lost Snoopy in space for 50 years. The Apollo 10 lunar module was named after the cartoon beagle. In 1969 astronaut Tom Stafford flew it within 9 miles of the Moon to scout Apollo 11's landing site. Then NASA fired its engine, sent it into orbit around the Sun and lost track of it. In 2019 amateur astronomers said they were 98 percent sure they had found it. Snoopy is still out there, circling the Sun.

The underdog gym from the movie Hoosiers is real. Knightstown, Indiana raised $14,400 to build it in 1921. It closed in 1966 and nearly got torn down in 1988. The 1986 film had already made it famous. Two preservation groups stepped in and saved it. Real high school teams still play real games there. More than 80 a year. It never stopped being a real gym.