Strange But True: Dollar Bills
By Lucie Winborne
In 2018, Nataraj Karate set a new Guinness World Record by stuffing 650 drinking straws in his mouth at once. He had to keep them there for at least 10 seconds to break the previous record.
Human blood cells have different lifespans.
Dollar bills weren’t always green. Colonial money, for example, was tan with black or red ink. The Civil War government began using green ink to print paper money because it didn’t fade or easily decompose, which protected against counterfeiting.
Auto manufacturer Volkswagen makes not just vehicles, but currywurst sausages.
Following his successful bladder stone surgery, the relieved English diarist Samuel Pepys celebrated the anniversary of the event every year after.
The first hot-air balloon flight, in 1783, took off with a sheep, a duck and a rooster on board, as it was unknown how the human body would react to flying at high altitudes. (They landed safely.)
A company in Poland makes dinner- ware out of wheat bran.
Queen Elizabeth II visited the set of the TV series “Game of Thrones” but couldn’t be seated on the throne due to an old rule that “the ruling monarch can’t sit on a foreign throne.”
While it’s not the longest word in the English language, a study of 1.7 million samples of everyday English found that the longest word you’re likely to encounter on a daily basis is “uncharacteristically.”