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.

In Laguna, Brazil, wild dolphins herd entire schools of mullet toward fishermen waiting in the shallows, then slap the water or dive deep to signal the exact second to cast the net. Nobody trained them to do this. Fishermen haul in more and bigger fish, and the dolphins scoop up whatever scatters free. It has happened for well over a century, and how the skill spreads between dolphins is still a mystery.

A Bedouin shepherd threw a stone into a cave by the Dead Sea to chase a lost goat. He heard pottery shatter instead. Inside were clay jars holding scrolls close to 2,000 years old - the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible ever found, roughly 1,000 years older than any manuscript known before. Over the next decade, searchers found more than 900 manuscripts across 11 caves.

San Francisco's Financial District is built on top of more than 40 Gold Rush ships, possibly 70 or more. In 1849, crews abandoned their vessels to chase the gold rush, then built new streets right over the hulls. Workers hit one ship, the Rome, while digging a Muni tunnel in 1994. Every day, trains rumble through its hull.

Allen Parton came home from the Gulf War in 1991 unable to walk, talk, or remember his wife and children. Doctors told Sandra to leave him. A Labrador named Endal - rejected from service training - learned 200 commands from Allen's gestures and rebuilt his capacity to feel. When a car knocked Allen out in 2001, Endal put him in the recovery position, retrieved his phone, and ran to a hotel for help. Endal was best man when they remarried.

Steve Martin has won more Grammy Awards for playing the banjo than for being funny. The comedy legend picked up two Grammys for his 1970s stand-up albums, including "A Wild and Crazy Guy." His music has earned him three more Grammys. That includes a recording with Earl Scruggs and his solo album "The Crow." Steve Martin has won more Grammys for music than for comedy, three to two.

Farmers near Xi'an, China were digging a well in March 1974 when their shovels hit a buried clay head. It led to the Terracotta Army: an estimated 8,000 soldiers, of which only 2,000 have been dug up so far. They guard the 2,200-year-old tomb of China's first emperor, a tomb that has never been opened. Ancient writers said it holds rivers of mercury, and soil tests found the mercury is real.

Hundreds of strangers showed up at Ruakaka Beach in New Zealand when 40 pilot whales stranded themselves at dusk. Volunteers dug trenches around the whales, slid fabric sheets beneath their bodies, and lifted them off the sand in coordinated teams - forming a human wall to guide each animal back into the sea. Thirty-six of the forty whales made it home.

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.