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A 2014 study claimed that domestic cats have the urge to kill humans and would do so, if only they were larger.
A positive piece of news: in 2003, US shelters in New York City killed more than two-thirds of the dogs and cats they took in. As of 2016, the proportion was down to 13%.
Giving cats food with an antibody may help people with cat allergies. Pet food maker Purina is studying how adding an antibody to the pet food curbs reactions in the owners.
The German-Soviet campaign during World War II (WWII) accounted for five times as many deaths as all the other European combat theatres combined.
During WWII, self-inflicted losses in the Soviet Red Army were higher than all US soldiers killed in action.
In the early 20th century, the German Empire developed military plans to invade the USA. None of them was feasible.
2016 was the first year since 1968 when no British soldiers died in a military operation.
The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. Among other things, it standardised the concert pitch at 435 Hz.
In New York City, USA, the Grand Central Station produces more radiation than allowed in a nuclear power plant. It gives you a dose of radiation when you go through it due to the granite used in its construction.
In 1977, US car manufacturers recalled more cars than they produced.
At any given moment, Bitcoin miners are using enough energy to power over two million US homes.
In 1907, French waiters went on strike for the right to have moustaches. Until then, in France, moustaches were a symbol of class and stature, while waiters were seen as lower class and thus not worthy of boasting a moustache.
In 2017, US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account was temporarily deleted. Twitter described the perpetrator as a “customer support employee who did this on his last day”.
The chances of getting killed by rubbish falling from space are estimated 1 in 5 billion.
In the USA, more people die from overdose of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl than there are victims of heroin and cocaine overdoses combined.
US Presidents J. F. Kennedy, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan were all members of The National Rifle Association (NRA) and were all shot at.
Natural is not always better: natural almond flavour contains traces of cyanide; artificial one does not.
As of 2020, more than 200 corpses of unlucky climbers have remained on the slopes of Mount Everest.
Some car manufacturers should have known better when choosing the names for their car models. Some examples: Mazda LaPuta (in Spanish it means: “the whore”), Mitsubishi Pajero (in Spanish: “wanker”), Chevrolet Nova (in Spanish: “It doesn’t go”), Opel Ascona (in Portuguese: “female genitalia”), and Honda Fitta (in Swedish and Norwegian: “cunt”).
In 2012, a woman on a visit to Iceland took part in a major mountain search operation for a lost tourist. A few hours later, she realised that she was the missing person everyone was looking for.
A French citizen, fluent in French, was denied a certificate she needed to settle in Canada’s French-speaking part, Quebec. According to the authorities, she had not demonstrated sufficient proficiency in French because one chapter of her doctoral thesis was written in English.
In 1997, the song “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette was nominated for a Grammy Award. Ironically, the song’s lyrics describe mostly bad luck, and not irony.
Every minute, on average, two people drown somewhere in the world.
In 1986, a hailstorm killed around 100 people in Gopalganj, Bangladesh. The hailstones were the size of grapefruits and weighed up to 1.02 kg (2.25 lb) each.
After the 2004 tsunami, many people in Southeast Asia stopped eating seafood. They argue that their relatives who died in the ocean during the tsunami were eaten by sea creatures and eating seafood is indirectly cannibalism.
In the USA, between 9% and 10% of those struck by lightning die, with an annual average of 25 deaths in the last decade.
