Smithsonian Facts

A stray puppy was smuggled onto a troopship in a coal bin in 1917. He served 18 months in the WWI trenches, warned his regiment of mustard gas attacks, located wounded men in No Man's Land, and bit a German spy's leg until soldiers arrived. He is the most decorated war dog of WWI and the only dog promoted to sergeant through combat. His body is at the Smithsonian.

Bob Ross painted roughly 30,000 works in his lifetime - nearly triple Picasso's output. For each of his 381 TV episodes, he painted three versions of the same scene: one before the camera, one on air, and one for his books. Today, 1,165 of those originals sit in cardboard boxes in a Virginia warehouse owned by Bob Ross Inc., which has never sold a single one. The Smithsonian holds four.