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
The rarest motorcycle in the world was found behind a brick wall in Chicago and has engine technologies well ahead of its time. The “Traub” is still running to this day.
14
In 1700s, the deer skin was a common medium of exchange between the trading settlers and the native Red Indians in America. This is how a buck became a slang for a dollar.
28
A man named Heraclitus had an illness that made his body swell up with water. To try to sweat it off, he buried himself in a steaming pile of animal poo, but then overheated and died of dehydration.
18
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.
6
'⸮' is a punctuation mark that was first proposed in the 1580s to denote sarcasm or irony.
17
In 1537, England's King Henry VII officially declared February 14th the holiday of St. Valentine's Day.
52
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