In a very early draft of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones carried brass knuckles instead of a bullwhip.

See also:
- Indiana Jones Official Site

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Adolph Hitler played chess daily. He always played the white pieces, and insisted on being allowed to replace one of his bishops with a second queen.

See also:
- Chess.net

keywords: entertainment, history, famous people, government, nazi, world war ii, holocaust, germany, game, trivia, fun fact, fact of the day

Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower, enjoyed a successful career as an architect despite having dyslexia and a paralyzing fear of heights.

See also:
- Eiffel Tower official site

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First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was so convinced the White House was haunted that she kept a vial of holy water on her nightstand.

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- Eleanor Roosevelt

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On Christmas Day, 1968, a scheduling mixup left Checkpoint Charlie unmanned for 12 hours.

See also:
- Checkpoint Charlie Museum

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The site where the Parthenon was built had to be cleared of hundreds of dinosaur bones (then called giants' bones) before construction could begin.

See also:
- The Parthenon
- Prehistoric life

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The Red Baron wasn't particularly patriotic - he just wanted to fly. He applied to both the German Army Air Service and the British Royal Air Force.

See also:
- NOVA: Who killed the Red Baron?

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The practice of shrinking heads, strongly associated with primitive tribes of South America, was also a common custom among the Knights Templar.

See also:
- Shrunken Head Museum

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Princess Diana had her navel pierced - and fitted with a 2.8-carat diamond stud - just a few hours before her fatal accident.

See also:
- TIME: 100 Heroes

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Archimedes endured a tragic fate at the hands of drunken Roman soldiers. After forcing him to cut off and eat his own nose, they boiled him in oil.

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- Archimedes

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The striped mittenfish, a deepwater species recently discovered in the Java Sea, can change its sex at will by turning its entire body inside out.

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- Hermaphroditic Fish

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Counterculture icon Timothy Leary was afraid of barbers. He learned to cut his own hair at the age of nine, and never again visited a barbershop.

See also:
- Official site of Timothy Leary

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The lion used in the original MGM movie logo killed its trainer and two assistants the day after the logo was filmed.

See also:
- MGM official site

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In 2004, a lab at a university in Texas received a $6 million federal grant to breed radioactive armadillos for possible use in warfare.

See also:
- Texas Parks and Wildlife

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In 1903, a stone phallus weighing 2.2 tons was unearthed in rural Ohio.

See also:
- Archaeological Institute of America

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Sesame seeds were so prized during the Middle Ages that in some parts of the world they were worth their weight in gold.

See also:
- Ancient Trade Routes

keywords: spice trade, spice routes, food preservation sesamum, sesame oil, history, food and drink, culture and places, trivia, fun fact, fact of the day

The face of Uncle Sam, the fictional personification of the United States, was modeled after a door-to-door salesman from Canada.

See also:
- Library of Congress: Uncle Sam

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At the 2006 World Gourmand Expo, Asian desserts took last place in every category: taste, texture, aroma, appearance and presentation.

See also:
- The Food of Asia

keywords: food and drink, culture and places, asia, cuisine, chopsticks, grass jelly, pat bing soo, china, thailand, cambodia, trivia, fun fact, fact of the day