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.
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Chunosuke Matsuyama, a Japanese Seaman, sent a message in a bottle in 1784 that his ship had wrecked. It washed up in 1935 in the village where he was born.
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In 1799, a boy found a 17lb. rock in a creek in North Carolina and used it as a doorstop. It was actually gold.
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Sergeant Stubby was the only war dog to be promoted to sergeant through combat in WWI. He saved his regiment from surprise mustard gas attacks, found and comforted the wounded, and even once caught a German spy by the seat of his pants, holding him there until American Soldiers found him.
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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.
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Ancient Greeks believed that redheads turned into vampires after they died.
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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.
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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.”
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