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.
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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
Leonardo Da Vinci predicted the mass use of solar energy as long ago as 1447.
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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 word 'mile' is derived from the Latin word for 1,000 - the number of paces it took the average Roman!
6
The ‘@’ sign is centuries old, and was used in Europe to denote a unit of weight (the “arroba”) equivalent to 25 lbs.
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The ancient Egyptians thought the function of the brain was to produce snot.
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