Al Capone earned $105m per year from alcohol and rackets during the Prohibition era. Today, this would be equivalent to $1.4b per year.
7
In Brazil, prison inmates can reduce their sentence by 4 days (up to 48 days a year) for every book they read and write a report on.
32
In 1987, a Chicago TV station had its broadcast interrupted by a pirate signal that shows a man in a Max Headroom mask mumbling and being spanked with a fly swatter. Despite investigations by the FCC and FBI, this became the only known incident in which a hacker interrupted a major TV broadcast without getting caught.
19
If NYC were its own country, and the NYPD was its army, it would be the twentieth-best-funded army in the world, just behind Greece and just ahead of North Korea.
14
In 1770, the British Parliament passed a law condemning lipstick, stating that “women found guilty of seducing men into matrimony by a cosmetic means could be tried for witchcraft.”
4
The U.S. Government will not allow portraits of living persons to appear on stamps.
101
In 1995, a man named Shawn Nelson stole a tank from the US Army and took it for a joyride on a highway in California.
12