In 1999, a fisherman found a love letter in a bottle from a soldier in WWI. He returned said letter to the now deceased widows 86 year old daughter.
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Napoleon Bonaparte thought torture should be abolished because the information obtained from it is worthless.
25
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
In 1799, a boy found a 17lb. rock in a creek in North Carolina and used it as a doorstop. It was actually gold.
34
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 ancient Egyptians thought the function of the brain was to produce snot.
16
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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