1. In 1989, Lyle and Erik Menendez murdered their parents and were ultimately sentenced to life in prison. The case went on to be very widely publicized, and the pair holds dubious distinction in the annals of American crime. In the time between the murders and when they were arrested, the Menendez brothers attended a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden, and there's actually a Mark Jackson card in circulation on which you can spot them sitting courtside:
2. The last McDonald's in Iceland closed in 2009, so Hjortur Smarason bought the last meal they sold and put it on display. His reasoning? He told AFP, "I had heard that McDonald's never decompose so I just wanted to see if it was true or not." There's even a livestream of the burger and fries so the whole world can witness its immortality together:
4. At roughly 400 years old, this Greenland Shark has been dubbed the "longest-living vertebrate" on Earth. Since radiocarbon dating — the process used to determine the shark's age — is not exact, the youngest she's believed to be is about 275 years old, while the oldest she could be is over 500:
5. This is what the Earth might look like if it didn't have any water:
6. Here's a bird's-eye view of Barcelona — with La Sagrada Familia there near the center:
7. The Statue of David is really really big:
8. And hummingbird eggs are really really tiny:
9. Not only do bees sleep for 5–8 hours every day (and enjoy cuddling with one another in the process), but some studies suggest they even have dreams:
10. These Levi's jeans, the oldest pair known to exist, are approximately 142 years old and were called "waist overalls" at the time they were made. A slightly younger pair from 1893 sold for $130,000 in 2018:
11. The Harlem Hellfighters were an all-Black infantry regiment in World War I who fought in the trenches of the frontlines for 191 straight days — more than any other American unit — in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the deadliest military campaign in American history. Their heroics and sacrifices were well-documented by both the American and foreign press, helping them to become one of the most famous, and feared, fighting units in the Great War:
12. And this is Sgt. Henry Johnson, whose bravery would make him not only the most famous Harlem Hellfighter, but also one of the best known American soldiers to fight in WWI. Johnson was one of the first Americans to ever be awarded the French Croix de Guerre avec Palme, France's most prestigious military honor. Sadly, he wouldn't receive his due recognition back home in his lifetime. He risked his life countless times for a country that embraced segregation and treated him like a second-class citizen, and would deny him the full military honors he had rightfully earned in his short career. In 1996, he was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, in 2002 the Distinguished Service Cross, and in 2015 he was awarded the Medal of Honor:
13. And Harry Patch was the last surviving WWI veteran from any nation until his death in 2009. The battle of Passchendaele in 1917, in which he fought, would haunt him for the rest of his life. So severe was his PTSD that he wasn't able to talk about his experiences until his 100th birthday:
14. These are the "Lovers of Valdaro." During a typical archeological excavation, still a very careful and painstaking process, the Lovers would've had to be separated. Doing so, however, would’ve destroyed the significance of the discovery, and great pains were taken to carefully move them as they were found — and they remain that way in the National Archaeological Museum of Mantua. It was later determined that they were no older than 20 years old at the time of their deaths:
15. Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and others curated "The Golden Record," which contains "115 analog-encoded photographs, greetings in 55 languages, a 12-minute montage of sounds on Earth, and 90 minutes of music." Two of these records were affixed to Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 and sent into deep space to drift for eternity — or until discovered by extraterrestrials:
16. This is Old Dragon Head, the easternmost end of the Great Wall of China:
17. Paul Baxter feared he had lung cancer when, suffering from a chest infection, his bronchoscopy turned up an oddly shaped mass — it turned out to be a tiny toy traffic cone he inhaled as a child:
18. Dagmar Turner was afraid that the brain surgery she needed to undergo would end her career as a violinist. So committed were her surgeons to ensuring this wouldn't happen, they carefully mapped her brain in advance of the surgery to determine which regions were most active while she plays the instrument, and they even had her play during the surgery itself:
19. According to a University of Granada study, meerkats were found to be the most murderous mammals out of the 1,024 species that were analyzed. Almost 20% of all meerkat deaths came at the hands of another meerkat:
21. The nicobar pigeon, which can be found on offshore islands scattered across the Indian and Pacific oceans, might completely change the way you look at pigeons:
22. These massive tunnels are believed to have been dug between 8,000 to 10,000 years ago by either a long extinct species of prehistoric ground sloth or giant armadillos:
23. And lastly, the streets of Philadelphia used to be paved with wood. The last remaining of these streets is Camac Street, which, for obvious reasons, is closed to cars:
Want to see what I learned last week? Click here to find out.
