Fun Facts!

   Because I don't want to talk about current events or any super deep subjects right now, here's a collection of fun facts you might not have known before.

• Snakes fertilize their eggs before they lay them, so, unlike chicken eggs, you won't ever find a nest of unfertilized snake eggs.
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• Once, due to a complicated series of political maneuvers, there was a grand total of three popes at the same time! Each thought they were the only proper pope and declared the others excommunicated from the church and therefore, as they believed, from Heaven.
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•  Pedro Lascurain was president of Mexico for less than an hour. He wasn't assassinated, he just resigned due to political pressure from the dude who was next in line.
  

  

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• The shortest war in recorded history was the Anglo-Zanzibar War, and it lasted no longer than forty minutes. It was fought by pro-slavery factions trying to regain control of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, which had been taken over by the British some years before and forced to become slave-free.
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• The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophia was a disaster from start to finish. A group of Serbian nationalists backed by the Serbian government and by Russia tried to throw a bomb under the archduke's car, but the bomb bounced off the car and blew up a different car instead. The group scattered. While fleeing authorities, one member tried to poison himself, but failed because the poison was expired, then tried to drown himself, but the river he jumped into was only fifteen inches deep. He died sick in prison several years later. Gavrilo Princip fled to a delicatessen after the failed assassination, where he spotted the Archduke and his wife on the road outside after their driver took a wrong turn trying to get to the hospital housing the people injured in the previous assassination attempt. Although Gavrilo Princip was at point-blank range, he missed one of his two targets, taking out the archduke's wife instead of the general he was aiming at. After the investigation revealed the complicity of the Serbian government in the shooting, the Austrian government could have legitimately declared war on Serbia, giving Russia no time to shore up their courage and mobilize and keeping the conflict a regional one between Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Serbia. However, the Austrian government sent Serbia a series of demands, and, after a month, declared war when Serbia refused only a few out of the long list given, thus giving Russia time to mobilize and declare war and starting World War One.
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• Once, the Austrian army accidentally attacked themselves and lost ten thousand men.
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• Aristotle believed maggots were born from rotten meat and the mud at the bottom of rivers gave birth to eels.
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• Cleopatra VII, wife of Marc Antony, was the first in a long line of Ptolemaic pharaohs to actually speak Egyptian. This is due to the fact that the Ptolemaic pharaohs were not Egyptian, but Greek. Thus, most depictions you have seen of Cleopatra are most likely wrong, as she would have resembled Greek populations much closer then she would have resembled Egyptian populations.
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• Tutankhamen was possibly murdered for the throne by his advisor by being deliberately run over by a chariot in the middle of battle. He was buried in haste in the tomb that should have been his advisor's. His advisor, who took over after his death, was most likely buried in the tomb meant for Tutankhamen.
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I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.

• There are elements of the periodic table named after Einstein, Marie Curie, and America.
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• Marie Curie died of radiation poisoning as a result of too many experiments with radioactive substances without proper protection.
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• Snakes literally eat dust. Using the Jacob's organ, snakes taste dust when flicking their tongues in and out of their mouth and the electrical signal in the dust tell them where prey is.
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• Pandas have no natural predators.
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• All the pandas in the world belong to the nation of China. Try to steal a panda, and you just might end up at war!
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• Due to a mix of Hindus and Muslims, there is a country in Asia where it is culturally unacceptable to eat both pigs and cows
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• The suspected site of the crucifixion and tomb of Jesus was fought over by different Christian denominations. After a series of wars, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, among other sites, was split between six different denominations. No changes to the site are allowed unless all six denominations agree, which has never happened since the treaty was signed. When the treaty was signed, a workman was on a ladder washing a window, and the ladder has stayed there since the 18th century. A few times, a couple of the denominations have tried to move the ladder due to the silliness of the argument, but the other denominations have forced them to put the ladder back, since the ledge the ladder rests on is owned by multiple denominations and no one denomination has the authority to move the ladder.
  

  

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• You are more likely to be killed by a cow or a coconut falling on your head than a shark.
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   I could go on, but I should probably stop here.