In ancient Athens, the worlds first democracy, they had a process called ostracism, where once a year the people could vote on the politician they thought was most destructive to the democratic process. The “winner” was banished from Athens for 10 years.
2
The University of Oxford (teaching since 1096) predates the Aztec empire (1428 - 1521).
14
Leonardo Da Vinci made a robotic lion in 1515 that would walk, sway, open its mouth and move its tail - it even had a compartment that opened to present flowers.
22
Ice cream cones were popularized in America during the 1904 World’s Fair in Saint Louis when an ice cream vendor ran out of cups and asked a nearby waffle vendor to roll up his waffles to hold the ice cream.
17
There are pictures of Knights fighting Snails in old Medieval manuscripts - and nobody knows why.
23
Iceland has been so culturally isolated through history since the Vikings, that compared to other Scandinavian counties, people who speak Icelandic can still read the old Norsk sagas.
4
The word 'mile' is derived from the Latin word for 1,000 - the number of paces it took the average Roman!
6
In 1846, a 14 year old French peasant girl named Angelique Cottin was found to possess extraordinary electrical power. With a gentle touch she could knock over heavy pieces of furniture and even shock people near her.
17