Fun Facts That Are

Robert Kearns invented the intermittent windshield wiper. Ford passed - then put it on every car they built. He sued, representing himself for 12 years after three law firms quit. Ford offered $30 million to settle. Kearns turned it down - the offer came without an admission. He didn't want their money. He wanted Ford to say they took it.

Martin Couney ran a Coney Island sideshow. Visitors paid 25 cents to watch premature babies living in incubators. Hospitals were turning preemies away as weaklings. Couney's exhibit gave them state-of-the-art care for free. Parents paid nothing. Over 40 years, roughly 6,500 of the 8,000 babies in his care went home. He wasn't even a licensed doctor.

Two brothers were cutting peat in a Danish bog in 1950. They found a body so well preserved, they called the police. Closed eyes, stubble, a calm face. They were sure it was a recent crime. It was actually Tollund Man, dead for 2,400 years. A braided leather noose was still around his neck. Archaeologists believe he was a ritual sacrifice, not foul play. His last meal, a barley porridge, was still in his stomach.

The Lincoln Memorial hid a secret room for over 100 years. It just opened to the public for the first time. The new $69 million museum has floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Visitors can walk past the columns holding up the memorial above. Lincoln's own signed Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment are inside.

Simon the cat was smuggled onto the Royal Navy frigate HMS Amethyst as a stray kitten in 1948. In 1949, Chinese forces fired on the ship and Simon took four pieces of shrapnel. He kept hunting rats and visiting sick sailors through 100 days trapped on the Yangtze River. The Navy awarded him the Dickin Medal - the highest honor any animal can receive. He died before the ceremony.

Christopher Hutton, a British MI9 spy, hid real escape kits inside Monopoly sets sent to Allied POW camps in WWII. He chose Waddingtons - the only UK firm that made Monopoly AND printed on silk - to hide silk maps, a compass, a file, and real foreign cash inside each box. A red dot on Free Parking told captured RAF pilots which sets held the tools.

A 58-year-old man was pinned face-down under a car at a Somerville, Massachusetts intersection. Somerville police officers and nearby construction workers rushed over and physically lifted the vehicle - rolling it onto two wheels and pushing it back 10 feet - to free him. He was conscious and speaking when paramedics took him to Mass General.

Kurt Russell was a pro baseball player before he was a movie star. He spent three years in the minor leagues. In 1973, he was hitting .563 in just six games at Double-A with the California Angels. A baserunner came in high and hit him hard at second base, tearing his rotator cuff. His baseball days were over. Hollywood got him back for good.

Michael Garcia got third-degree burns when a Starbucks barista handed him an unsecured tea carrier at the drive-thru. Starbucks offered $30 million to settle - but refused to apologize or change policy. A jury hit them with $50 million.

Harry deLeyer arrived late to a 1956 horse auction. He paid $80 to save a gray plow horse already headed for the dog food factory. He later sold the horse to a neighbor. The horse jumped five foot fences again and again just to walk home. So deLeyer bought him back. Two years after that auction, Snowman was the national show jumping champion. He won it again the next year.

Stonehenge's central slab is the Altar Stone - a 6-tonne sandstone block. Scientists believed for a century it came from Wales. A study in Nature matched its mineral fingerprint to northeast Scotland, over 750 km away. That is the longest recorded stone haul of the Neolithic era. How Neolithic people moved it there remains unsolved - possibly by sea.

Ferruccio Lamborghini owned several Ferraris but kept burning out the clutch. He drove to Maranello and told Enzo Ferrari the clutches were rubbish. Ferrari dismissed him - a tractor man had no business criticizing his cars. Ferruccio went home and built a rival brand in four months. Three years later, his Miura was hailed as the world's first true supercar.