21 Facts I Learned This Week That Are So Dang Interesting, I'll Never Be Able To Forget Them
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1.While I had always known Cleopatra was wealthy, I didn't realize she was this wealthy! Cleopatra controlled many of Egypt's key industries in her role as pharaoh and was estimated to have a net worth of $95.8 billion in today's money. Although Cleopatra was known for her wealth, she reportedly borrowed heavily from foreign governments to fund wars. And she wasn't the only woman to have extreme wealth! Russia's Catherine the Great, Egypt's Hatshepsut, and China's Empress Wu were also among history's richest women.
2.Titanic fans might recall the scene in which an elderly first class couple embraces on their bed as water rushes into their stateroom. That couple was based on Macy's department store co-owner and former Congressman Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida. According to the couple's great-grandson, Paul Kurzman, they decided to die together on the ship instead of risking being separated. "My great-grandmother Ida stepped into the lifeboat expecting that her husband would follow," Kurzman told Today. "When he didn’t follow, she was very concerned and the ship’s officer in charge of lowering that particular lifeboat said, 'Well, Mr. Straus, you’re an elderly man…and we all know who you are....Of course, you can enter the lifeboat with your wife.'"
"My great-grandfather said, 'No. Until I see that every woman and child on board this ship is in a lifeboat, I will not enter into a lifeboat myself,'" Kurzman recalled. After learning that Isidor wasn't getting on the lifeboat, Ida reportedly stepped out and headed back to her stateroom with her husband. While the shot featuring the couple's embrace made it into the film's final cut, they also appeared in one of the movie's deleted scenes, during which Ida tells Isidor, "Where you go, I go." Kurzman also shared that his family was able to recover a locket from Isidor's pocket after the ship sank, and revealed that Ida allegedly gave her fur coat to her maid, Ellen Bird, to keep her warm as she got on a lifeboat to escape the sinking ship. Bird survived and reportedly later tried to return the coat to the family, who insisted that she keep it.
3.Ever wondered why the Domino's Pizza logo has three dots? The dots represent the chain's first three locations. Co-founder Tom Monaghan allegedly wanted to add a new dot for every single location they opened, which obviously never came to fruition. So, how many dots would the logo have now? In 2021, there were 18,848 Domino's Pizza locations worldwide.
4.In the wake of Tom Brady's recent news that he's retiring from the NFL (he claims it's for good this time!), I'm even more intrigued by 80 for Brady. The movie is inspired by a group of real-life eighty-somethings who band together over their love for Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, and go on an adventure to see Brady play in Super Bowl LI. Elaine St. Martin and Betty Pensavalle gathered three of their close friends (and fellow football fanatics), Anita, Pat, and Claire, to watch the Patriots game at each others' houses every Sunday. "One Sunday here, one Sunday at my house, and it would go right to the five of us," St. Martin told CBS News Sunday Morning.
Although the women were good friends before, they said their friendships became even closer after they all became widows, with CBS News reporting that "game days became the link that kept their friendship from fumbling." While the group originally united over their love of the Patriots, they became major Brady fans after he took over for injured Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe in 2001. "I loved watching Tom from the beginning," St. Martin told Time. "Even when the Patriots were behind, we never lost hope. We knew he could pull out a miracle, as he did in many games, especially the Super Bowl against the Atlanta Falcons." In 2006, the club earned the nickname the "Over 80 for Brady Club" after Pensavalle's grandson designed them T-shirts with the moniker.
So, how did the story make it to the big screen? Pensavalle said her grandson, talent agent Max Gross, thought it would make for a cute movie, and decided to pitch it. In 2020, Tom Brady sent Pensavalle a personalized video message, telling her that he wanted to turn the group's story into a film. In addition to producing the movie, Brady makes a cameo alongside his fellow former Patriots Rob Gronkowski, Danny Amendola, and Julian Edelman. Although the club never made it to a Super Bowl to see Brady and the Patriots in action as portrayed in the movie, the surviving members are still hopeful they'll get to meet the quarterback. "I hope we see him before we die!" St. Martin joked to CBS News.
5.All thoroughbred horses in the northern hemisphere have a January 1 birthday, while all thoroughbreds born in the southern hemisphere have an August 1 birthday. In colonial times, all thoroughbred birthdays were celebrated on May 1 in England to mark a return to horse racing after the winter. In 1833, members of the Jockey Club decided they wanted to create a new universal birthdate of January 1. By 1858, the new birthday was accepted all over England. Across the pond in the United States, horse owners in the north accepted this change, while southerners were hesitant to give up the May 1 birthday. After the Civil War ended, the south accepted the new birthdate structure.
Ascot / Via giphy.com
6."I Will Always Love You" was famously first written and performed by Dolly Parton, only to gain a resurgence in popularity after Whitney Houston recorded her own spin on the love song for her movie The Bodyguard. Parton penned the song in 1974 as a goodbye to Porter Wagoner. Parton and Wagoner had a long history — Parton got her start on his show, where they often performed together as duet partners. After her song "Jolene" became a hit, Parton decided to leave Wagoner, and decided to write "I Will Always Love You" as a tribute to their relationship. She performed it as her final performance on his show. While the song is gorgeous, it obviously didn't soothe tensions between Parton and Wagoner: Several years later in 1979, he sued Parton for $3 million for breaching their contract.
Parton's version of "I Will Always Love You" ultimately went No. 1 on the charts twice, once in June 1974, and again in October 1982, making Parton the first artist to reach No. 1 twice with the same song. In 1992, Whitney Houston recorded her own version of the song as the centerpiece for The Bodyguard. Houston's version spent 14 weeks at No. 1, and remains the best-selling single by a female artist in history. After Houston died in 2012, the song once again re-entered the charts, making it the second song to ever reach the top 3 in two separate chart runs. Houston's version of the song made Parton an estimated $10 million in royalties, which she used to revitalize a Black neighborhood in Nashville to honor Houston.
7.When Audrey Jean Knauer, a woman from Kentucky, died in 1997, she shocked her family by leaving over $300,000 to actor Charles Bronson. Knauer had never actually met Bronson and was merely a huge fan of his work. "I bequeath to Charles Bronson (the talented character actor) and what he doesn’t want can pass thru to the Louisville Free Public Library," Knauer wrote. Knauer's sister challenged the will, and claimed that she was the rightful beneficiary of the money. Bronson reportedly settled the dispute out of court, and paid the family an undisclosed amount. As for the library? According to Empire, Bronson allegedly offered them $10,000 which they reportedly declined.
8.On December 4, 1875, former congressman and New York political boss William "Boss" Tweed escaped from prison and fled to Cuba. Tweed, a former bookkeeper and volunteer fireman, was elected alderman in New York City in 1851. Soon, he was elected to Congress, where he served "one lackluster term," before returning to New York politics. By 1870, Tweed had become incredibly influential in New York, and ran Tammany Hall, the organization that controlled Democratic nominations in New York. In 1873, Tweed was found guilty of embezzling millions from the government, and was sentenced to prison. It's estimated that Tweed and his partners stole between $30 million and $200 million from the city.
Tweed was arrested after a campaign run by influential people like George Jones, the publisher of the New York Times, Samuel J. Tilden, a reform leader, and Thomas Nast, who drew politically charged cartoons of Tweed, worked to expose his wrongdoing. In an attempt to get the accusations to go away, Tweed allegedly tried to bribe Jones and Nast. Tweed was sentenced to 12 years in prison, where he reportedly lived pretty lavishly and had a velvet sofa in his cell. Despite the 12-year sentence, Tweed was released from prison after a year, although he was rearrested soon after, and sent to debtor's prison.
During his second sentence, he was allowed to leave Ludlow Jail for supervised visits with his family. Although the visits were supervised, Tweed was able to escape during one of them. He fled to Cuba, then sailed on to Spain. He was eventually rearrested in Spain, and sent back to jail, where he remained for the rest of his life. Before his death in 1878, Tweed allegedly told authorities, "My imprisonment will have a moral effect." Tammany Hall lived on through the 1930s, when it was eventually taken down by a huge investigation led by then-governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt that exposed the level of corruption and ties to the mob in New York's government.
9.In 2006, David Austin, a rose breeder, sold the world's most expensive rose for a whopping $15.8 million. Austin spent 15 years and $5 million breeding the exclusive rose variety, which he called the Juliet. The rose made its debut at the Chelsea Flower Show, where it won 25 gold medals.
10.Seinfeld has gone down in TV history as being one of the greatest sitcoms of all time. When the show aired its finale in 1998, it made headlines for both the controversial plot line and for the sheer amount of people who tuned in. Frank Sinatra was rushed to the hospital during the episode, and reportedly made it there in record time because there was no traffic because so many people were inside watching the finale. In fact, Sinatra's daughter Nancy reportedly missed her chance to say goodbye to her father because she was home watching the episode.
Other networks even decided to honor the NBC sitcom. During the episode, TV Land aired a screen reading "We're TV fans, so... We're watching the last episode of Seinfeld." In the final shot of the four main characters together, they're in a jail cell discussing the buttons on George's shirt. This is a callback to the first scene from the pilot, during which they also talked about George's buttons. Filming for the final episode was intense: Only the script supervisor was given a full copy of the script, and had to ensure the actors and crew members would give their pages back at the end of every shoot so they could be shredded. Members of the live studio audience had to sign affidavits promising they wouldn't reveal any of the plot points for the series finale.
11.Wedding cakes originated in Ancient Rome, where the cake, which was closer to bread, was reportedly broken up and crumbled over the bride's head for luck and fertility. The newly wedded couple would then eat some of the crumbs, while guests would eat the remaining scraps. In Britain, this tradition evolved into throwing the cake at the bride to wish her luck with her fertility. By the medieval period, this tradition has disappeared, as cakes became less bread-like and more along the lines of the sweet treats that they are today.
Netflix / Via giphy.com