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
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
20 years ago, there were only 130 websites, Google wasn't around, and you had to pay for an email account through an ISP.
12
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
Leonardo Da Vinci predicted the mass use of solar energy as long ago as 1447.
153
Although Nostradamus died in the middle of 1566, his 1567 almanac was published because he had the foresight to prepare it before his death.
19