The Aztecs were the first to serve chocolate as a drink. They also mixed it with hot chili pepper to make it really 'hot'.
13
Romans used a plant called Silphium as contraception. They had so much sex that they drove it into extinction.
24
Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a watchmaker, 240 years ago invented a robot that could write, and the parts could be interchanged to say whatever you want.
13
During the Black Plague, it was thought that bad smells were the cause of the plague. "Plague Doctors" therefore wore masks with long beak-like noses stuffed with flowers or smoke to hide the smells.
19
When Charles Darwin first discovered the Galapagos Tortoises, he tried to ride them!
18
Genghis Khan exempted the poor and clergy from taxes, encouraged literacy, and established free religion, leading many peoples to join his empire before they were even conquered.
28
Unsinkable Sam (nickname of a German ship's cat) who served on 3 warships, one German, two British, all sank in action. The cat survived each sinking, floating away on wooden planks to rescue.
19
In the 1830s, a Greek prime minister tried to spread the potato in Greece but people weren't interested so he put armed guards in front of shipments of potatoes so people would think they were important. People then started stealing these potatoes so much that the crop spread to all of Greece.
29