The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
During the California Gold Rush of 1849 miners sent their laundry to Honolulu for washing and pressing. Due to the extremely high costs in California during these boom years it was deemed more feasible to send the shirts to Hawaii for servicing.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors, also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa's lips.
In Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. He did this more than 100 years before either moon was discovered
Vikings used the skulls of their enemies as drinking vessels
Mongkut of Siam - the king in The King and I - had 9,000 wives and
concubines. Solomon, by contrast, had only 700.
The
war of 1812 is the only war in American history which congress debated the
merits of
The 16th century
Escorial palace of King Phillip II of Spain had 1,200 doors.
A dog was the first
in space and a sheep, a duck and a rooster the first to fly in a hot air
balloon.
Music was sent down
a telephone line for the first time in 1876, the year the phone was invented.
Beer was the first
trademarked product - British beer Bass Pale Ale received its trademark in 1876.
Playing-cards were
known in Persia and India as far back as the 12th century. A pack then consisted
of 48 instead of 52 cards.
Excavations from
Egyptian tombs dating to 5,000 BC show that the ancient Egyptian kids played
with toy hedgehogs.
Accounts from
Holland and Spain suggest that during the 1500s and 1600s urine was commonly
used as a tooth-cleaning agent.
Julius Caesar was
the first to encode communications, using what has become known as the Caesar
Cipher.
The first mention
of soap was on Sumerian clay tablets dating about 2,500 BC. The soap was made of
water, alkali and cassia oil.
The first animal in
space was the female Samoyed husky named Laika, launched by the Soviets in 1957.
In 1958 the US sent
two mice called Laska and Benjy into space.
In 1969 the US
launched a male chimpanzee called Ham into space.
In 1963 the French
launched a cat called Feliette into space.
Great Britain was
the first county to issue postage stamps, on 1 May 1840. Hence, UK stamps are
the only stamps in the world not to bear the name of the country of origin.
Napoleon's
christening name was Italian: Napoleone Buonaparte. He was born on the island of
Corsica one year after it became French property. As a boy, Napoleon hated the
French.
John Rolfe married
Pocahontas the Red Indian Princess in 1613.
Only one of the
Seven Wonders of the World still survives: the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The first parachute
jump from an airplane was made by Captain Berry at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1912.
On 21 June 1913,
over Los Angeles, Georgia Broadwick became the first women to parachute from an
airplane.
The first written
account of the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie, was made in 565AD. More on Nessie
The world's first
skyscraper was the 10-storey Home Insurance office, built in Chicago in 1885.
(During Roman times buildings were up to 8 storeys high.)