In ancient Rome, men who were found guilty of rape would have their testicles crushed between two stones.

The masterpiece of renaissance sculpture David by Michelangelo was unveiled in Florence on 8 September, 1504.

The first FAX machine was patented in 1843, 33 years before Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone.

After Israel declared independence in 1948, (not-yet-Dr.) Ruth was trained by the Israeli military as a sniper.

Tickling was a form of torture used in several ancient cultures, because it left no mark and recovery was quick.

The name of the first airplane flown at Kitty Hawk by the Wright Brothers, on December 17, 1903, was Bird of Prey.

People in Victorian Britain who couldn’t afford chimney sweeps dropped live geese down their chimneys instead.

The University of Oxford (teaching since 1096, which was 917 years ago) predates the Aztec empire (1428 – 1521).

In the 1930s, penicillin was so precious that it was re-extracted from the urine of patients to conserve every bit of it.

The quarries where the Romans extracted travertine for the Colosseum and other great structures are still being mined today.

The first US Marines wore high leather collars to protect their necks from sabres, hence the name “leathernecks.”

Peter the Great had his wife’s lover’s head cut off, then had it preserved in alcohol and placed next to her bed.

Henry III had a pet polar bear which he kept in the tower of London and let out for swims in the Thames on the end of a rope.

In 1865, several veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, called the Ku Klux Klan.

The Miss America Contest was created in Atlantic City in 1921 with the purpose of extending the tourist season beyond Labor Day.