In 2011, a couple bought a box of textbooks for $10. Inside, they found a 25-cent bill signed by the president of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston, and subsequently sold it for $63,250.
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A monk had once written over a book that contained information about calculus that was written by Archimedes in ancient Greece that could have made us 100 or even 1000 years more mathematically and technologically advanced.
13
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.
3
Instead of McDonald's tearing down a ~200-year-old Georgian mansion, citizens of a small NY town forced them to renovate it instead, resulting in a uniquely historic franchise location.
7
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
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
Al Capone's armored limousine, after being seized by the feds, was later used to protect Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), 32nd President of the US, after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
20