Pineapples were such a status symbol in 18th century England that you could rent one for the evening to take to a party.
25
Leonardo Da Vinci loved animals so much that he used to buy caged animals at the market just to set them free.
57
In 1956, the IBM 350 hard disk drive had 3.75 MB of storage, weighed over 2000 lbs, had to be moved around with forklifts, and was delivered via large cargo airplanes.
11
France’s King Louis XIV was offered biological weapons by an Italian chemist. He not only refused, but also paid the chemist an annual salary to never reveal the technology to anyone else.
21
Astronomer Percival Lowell believed that he was the first person to observe canals on Venus, but because of a faulty adjustment of the eyepiece on his telescope, he was in fact looking at the blood vessels in his own eye.
4
There's a bar in Ireland (presently named Sean’s Bar) that was opened in 900AD.
32