Fun Facts That Are

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.

Togo was 12 years old in 1925. That's ancient for a sled dog. Diphtheria threatened to kill children across Nome, Alaska. Musher Leonhard Seppala and Togo ran the serum relay's longest, most dangerous leg. It covered over 260 miles, including a deadly crossing of the frozen Norton Sound. Balto ran the final 55 miles into town. He got the parade, the movie, and the Central Park statue. Togo got almost nothing.

Kate Shelley was a teenager when an 1881 storm collapsed a trestle near her Iowa home. A passenger train with 200 people aboard was still coming. She crawled across a flooded railroad bridge on her hands and knees, lantern blown out. She reached the depot in time to stop the train. Railroads gave her a lifetime pass and a Tiffany medal. Today, Union Pacific trains still cross the bridge that bears her name.

Tom DeLonge left Blink-182 in 2015 to chase his obsession with UFOs. The world mocked him for it. His group, To The Stars Academy, published three US Navy cockpit videos in 2017 and 2018. The Pentagon officially declassified those same three videos in April 2020. It confirmed real Navy footage of phenomena still marked unidentified. He was right years before the Pentagon admitted it.

Owen was a one-year-old hippo swept out to sea by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Villagers in Malindi, Kenya spent hours dragging him to shore with ropes and nets. At Haller Park he refused to leave the side of Mzee, a 130-year-old giant tortoise. The two ate, swam, and slept side by side for years.