Feed Your Brain With These 12 Fascinating Facts

1. After Col. Shaw died in battle, Confederates buried him in a mass grave as an insult for leading black soldiers. Union troops tried to recover his body, but his father sent a letter saying “We would not have his body removed from where it lies surrounded by his brave and devoted soldiers.”

2. Organ donation is on an opt-out basis in Singapore. Citizens who opt-out have a lower priority of receiving an organ should they need one

3. In the 1880s, many farmers communicated by connecting their phones to barbed wire fences. This process often allowed for up to 20 people to be connected at once, everyone’s phone would ring regardless of who called, and the invention helped many farmers overcome depression and loneliness.

4. Flow is the mental state in which a person is completely absorbed in an activity, resulting in a loss of their sense of space and time

5. Teddy Roosevelt’s Son Died Flying for the US During WWI. When His Body Was Discovered Behind Enemy Lines, the Germans Gave Him A Full Military Burial With Honors.

6. The Oakland Buddha, placed by a resident on a street corner to prevent illegal dumping, the statue has now become a shrine for the local Vietnamese population who leave offerings and have even built a shelter for the Buddah. Crime in the area dropped 82%

7. In 2007 workers in Antarctica discovered several perfectly preserved crates of Scotch Whiskey left behind by Ernest Shackleton in 1909.

8. As a child, Michael Jackson’s father would torment him about his appearance, calling him ‘fat-nose’. Michael went on to have four rhinoplasties and fussed over how his body and face looked for the rest of his life

9. In 2005, Facebook hired graffiti artist David Choe to paint murals in their new office space. Choe accepted Facebook shares instead of a cash payment, and when Facebook went public in 2012, his shares were valued at $200 million

10. Genie Wiley was a girl who was raised in a dark isolated room with no indication of an outside world for the first 13 years of her life, her father was incredibly abusive, and when authorities rescued her she couldn’t speak at all and only made infantile noises.

11. Before the filming of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, director Alfonso Cuarón had Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson write essays about their characters. Watson turned in a 16 page essay, Radcliffe gave a single page, and Grint forgot to turn his in

12. John Travolta has a rank of Khakhan within Scientology which means he could kill someone and get away with it as the Church would cover it up as part of Ethics protection