Fun Facts That Are

Zebco is the push-button fishing reel your dad handed you. Its maker, the Zero Hour Bomb Company, made oil-well bombs - until its patents ran out. In 1947, Texas watchmaker R.D. Hull brought a fix: a board of nails and a coffee-can lid, an idea from a grocery clerk pulling string off a spool. It worked, and the bomb company renamed itself Zebco: ZEro hour Bomb COmpany. Someone is still handing one to a kid right now.

A cornhusking contest was a race to strip corn by hand, timed to the minute. In 1935, one of those contests drew 110,000 people to a cornfield in Newtown, Indiana. Two aerial bombs marked its start and finish, eighty minutes apart. Elmer Carlson of Iowa husked about 41½ bushels of corn by hand and won. NBC broadcast the whole contest live on national radio. Farmers still compete for the same title every October.

The Grand Ole Opry played Nashville's Ryman Auditorium for over 30 years, until 1974, when the show moved to a new building. Workers cut a six-foot circle of oak from the old stage and inlaid it dead center in the new one. Every performer since has stood on that circle to sing. In 2010, a flood swamped the entire stage. The circle was dried out and put back in place. It's still there today.

As she tells it, Catherine Roberts dreamed her son Nat, deployed to Iraq, was wrapped in a quilt. She woke up in her Delaware sewing room and made one, then sent it to a wounded stranger at Walter Reed. Volunteers have since hand-sewn over 454,000 Quilts of Valor for veterans touched by war, about 3,000 a month. The 450,000th went out in July 2026. They are still sewing.

Patsy Ann was a bull terrier, deaf from birth. She still knew which Juneau dock a ship would use, long before it came into sight. In 1934, Juneau's mayor named her the city's official greeter. One day a newspaper printed the wrong dock. The crowd gathered there, but Patsy Ann walked to the correct one instead. The ship proved her right. Her bronze statue still greets every cruise ship today.

Hugh Laurie played TV's Dr. House for eight years. Off camera, he was chasing something real: a life as a blues musician. He recruited New Orleans legends Dr. John and Irma Thomas for his debut album, Let Them Talk. It hit No. 1 on Billboard's Blues Albums chart. Two years later, his follow-up, Didn't It Rain, did it again. The TV doctor now has two No. 1 blues albums.

Hibbing is an old mining town on Minnesota's Iron Range. In 1919, the mining company found its ore ran directly under the town. So it moved the entire town two miles south. Workers rolled nearly 200 buildings there on logs and steel rails. One hotel didn't survive the trip. The empty ground became a pit long billed as the world's largest open-pit iron mine. Hibbing still stands today, two miles from where it started.

Jalen Hurts kept hearing the same story. Philadelphia schools were sending kids home early because classrooms were too hot. So the Eagles quarterback paid to install air conditioning in ten schools himself. More than 300 units later, over 5,000 students and staff have cool classrooms. Now every touchdown he scores pays for more.

Jesse Cole sold one season ticket in his first two months running the Savannah Bananas. He sold his house and slept on an air mattress in a duplex. One night a cockroach crawled across his face. Locals said he'd never sell another ticket. The opener sold out anyway. The team says every home game has since. This summer that meant an NFL stadium. Every game still sells out.

George Washington's army was pinned against the East River on the night of August 29, 1776, two days after losing the Battle of Long Island. Washington ordered a silent evacuation. Colonel John Glover's Marblehead fishermen rowed 9,000 soldiers across, boat after boat. Near dawn, a thick fog hid the last crossings. Washington left on the final boat. The British woke up to empty trenches.

Sturgis, South Dakota has 7,000 residents and hosts the world's biggest motorcycle rally, which drew a record 739,000 riders in 2015. It began in 1938 with nine riders racing for a crowd under 200. Pappy Hoel had just opened an Indian Motorcycle shop and formed the Jackpine Gypsies. His wife Pearl counted the bikes the night before and cooked a picnic for every rider. She kept doing it until the 1950s, when the crowd outgrew her kitchen.

The Goodyear Blimp has floated over college football since the 1955 Rose Bowl. Over the 64 years that followed, it covered more than 2,000 games. In January 2019, the College Football Hall of Fame gave it an honorary induction. More than 1,300 people are enshrined there. The blimp is still the only member who isn't human. Fans still watch the sky to see if a game is a big one.