Fun Facts That Are

Pamukkale in southwestern Turkey means Cotton Castle, and it looks like snow that never melts. Hot spring water loaded with calcium carbonate has crept down this hillside for hundreds of thousands of years, hardening into blinding white terraced pools. People have bathed in them since Roman times. The ancient spa city of Hierapolis was built right on top, and the whole site is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Jeff Goldblum has played jazz piano nearly every week in Los Angeles for 30 years. He and his band, the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, started the gig in the 1990s, mostly unadvertised. His debut album, The Capitol Studios Sessions, hit number one on the Billboard jazz chart in 2018. As a teenager in Pittsburgh, he cold-called cocktail lounges from the Yellow Pages for gigs. The Jurassic Park star is a genuine jazz musician.

Marty Stuart started collecting country music memorabilia as a boy, hiding guitars and costumes in his bedroom. He kept touring and rescuing pieces people threw away for 50 years. It became the largest private collection of country music artifacts in the world: more than 22,000 pieces, including items from Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, and Elvis. He gave it all to the public for free.

Winter the dolphin lost her tail after a crab trap rope cut off blood flow when she was two months old. A prosthetics team spent 18 months building her a silicone tail. The gel liner they invented to keep it in place - later named WintersGel - now helps thousands of human amputees worldwide.

Rowan Atkinson plays a bumbling idiot on screen, but off screen he's a skilled racing driver. In 1997 he bought a McLaren F1, one of only 64 ever built, and put 41,000 miles on it as a daily driver. He crashed it twice, once spinning off a wet road into a tree in 2011 and setting it on fire. Repairs reportedly became Britain's biggest car insurance payout, and he sold the rebuilt car for an estimated 8 million pounds.

For America's 200th birthday, all 50 states sent a covered wagon on a year-long ride across the pioneer trails in reverse, west to east. The wagon train pilgrimage covered 17,000 miles and stopped at 249 encampments before nearly 300 wagons and 5,000 riders rolled into Valley Forge together. President Ford met them there and signed the law making Valley Forge a National Historical Park.

The Heisman Trophy is the bronze statue college football hands its best player every year. The face on it is a forgotten NYU fullback. In 1934, sculptor Frank Eliscu asked his old classmate Ed Smith to pose for a project. Smith never asked what it was for. He played two pro seasons, then fixed elevators for a living. Forty-eight years later, a researcher called: your face is on the Heisman. In 1985 they handed him his own.

Those giant wooden castle playgrounds from the 1980s and 90s were designed by kids. Architect Bob Leathers visited local schools, collected children's drawings, and turned them into blueprints. Then the town's own parents and volunteers built it by hand, usually in about five days. He did this in more than 2,000 communities.

Lin Wang was a young elephant in Burma. Japanese soldiers forced him to haul supplies and pull artillery through the jungle during World War II. Chinese troops captured him in 1943. He marched home along the Burma Road, then sailed to Taiwan in 1947. He spent nearly 49 years at Taipei Zoo as Taiwan's most beloved animal. Lin Wang died in 2003 at 86, the longest living elephant ever recorded in captivity.

The rodeo clown - baggy pants, greasepaint, the guy everyone laughs at - has one real job. When a bull throws its rider, he charges the bull and draws it off the cowboy on the ground. Rodeo has run this way since the 1920s. The PRCA does not even call them clowns anymore. They are bullfighters, and every year the pros vote one Bullfighter of the Year. The cowboy gets to walk away.

Grady was a 1,200-pound Oklahoma cow. In February 1949 she bolted for the only light in a dark shed and squeezed through a 17-inch-wide silo window. She was stuck for four days: the steel-rimmed opening wouldn't widen. 5,400 letters and 700 telegrams poured in from 45 states. A Denver newspaper flew in farm expert Ralph Partridge, who greased a ramp and freed her. She lived 12 more years as a celebrity.

In August 1923, a 2-year-old Scotch Collie named Bobbie was separated from his family during a road trip through Wolcott, Indiana - 2,551 miles from home. Six months later, on February 15, 1924, he turned up at his family's door in Silverton, Oregon: gaunt, paws bloody, claws worn to nothing. He had crossed the Continental Divide alone, in winter. He came home.