Strange But True: Cinderella
By Lucie Winborne
Guglielmo Marconi, whose invention of wireless telegraphy was credited for saving the lives of over 700 Titanic passengers after it sank in 1912, had turned down a free passage on the ship, choosing instead to go to America via the Lusitania three days earlier. He narrowly missed death at sea a second time in 1915, when he was again a passenger on the Lusitania, about a month before it was sunk by a German U-boat.
The story of Cinderella first appears in a Chinese book written in the 850s.
Margaret Dixon, a Scottish criminal, was hanged at Musselburgh in 1728. However, just a few hours later, she climbed out of her coffin, and was reprieved and pardoned. Still, as her husband was considered a widower because she was “officially” deceased, Scottish law dictated that they had to remarry.
The country of Liechtenstein has twice as many registered corporations as citizens.
On April Fools’ Day 1957, the BBC television documentary “Panorama” broadcast a documentary about the so-called spaghetti orchards of Switzerland, with discussions of spaghetti plantations in Switzerland and Italy, the spaghetti weevil, and the reason for the pasta’s being of such uniform lengths held against a background of Swiss “spaghetti trees.” Many viewers, forgetting or failing to notice the date, believed the orchards were real!
Groups of geese on the ground are called a gaggle, but in the air they’re referred to as a skein.
Honey has been used as a center for golf balls and in antifreeze mixtures.
In 1974, the U.S. Army Materiel Command ran a contest to name its new headquarters building and received around 500 entries. The winner? “The AMC Building.”