30 facts about our world that make you look at it in a new way (31 photos)

Interesting facts like chips: once you eat one, you can't stop until you finish the whole pack. And the Instagram account “Strange Facts” with 1.2 million subscribers exists just to satisfy this hunger!





1. A Chinese farmer who dropped out of school after the third grade studied law on his own for 16 years in order to sue a chemical company for polluting his home village. He couldn't afford textbooks, so he studied at a local bookstore, paying with sacks of grain. In 2017, he won the case.



2. On October 24, 1975, women in Iceland went on strike in the fight for equal rights. 90% of women left their jobs and homes, which brought the whole country to a standstill. The following year, Parliament passed the Equal Pay Act. Five years later, Iceland became the first country in the world to elect a woman president. Iceland now has the highest level of gender equality in the world.





3. “Syndrome K” is a disease that Italian doctors invented to save Jews who had taken refuge in hospitals from the Nazis. They were quarantined and the Nazis thought they were suffering from a deadly and highly contagious disease.



4. A man named Dale Schroeder from Iowa grew up in a poor family. He never married, had no children, worked as a carpenter for 67 years, and only owned two pairs of pants. He spent all his savings to pay for the education of 33 students.



5. They say money doesn't grow on trees, but this dog from Colombia has clearly never heard such an expression. Seeing people exchanging banknotes for sweets, he brought three pieces of paper to the counter, for which he received cookies. Since then he has been doing this regularly.



6. One millionaire said he would take his Bentley to his grave. When this decision was criticized, it was revealed that it was a stunt to draw attention to organ donation. “People always take things to their graves that are much more expensive than cars, and no one cares.”



7. One day, a cow escaped from the slaughterhouse, breaking through a metal fence and breaking the arm of the man who was trying to catch it, and swam off to an island where she now lives alone.



8. Actor Steve Buscemi worked as a firefighter in New York from 1980 to 1984. The day after 9/11, he returned to his old firehouse to help. He worked several 12-hour shifts and, along with other firefighters, searched for survivors under the rubble of the World Trade Center.



9. In Texas, a man beat to death a man who raped his five-year-old daughter, and the court did not charge him.



10. Surgeons after a 32-hour operation to remove brain tumors.



11. At the age of 13, James Harrison underwent surgery during which he was transfused with 13 liters of blood. After that, he vowed to become a donor when he turns 18. It turned out that his blood contains rare antibodies that can cure Rh-conflict. During his lifetime, he donated blood more than 1,000 times and saved more than 2.4 million unborn children.



12. A drone captured a sleeping family of elephants from above.



13. Anaïs Bordier saw a video on YouTube with a girl who looked exactly like her. She messaged her on Facebook and found out they were born on the same day and they were both adopted. It turned out that this girl, Samantha Futerman, is her twin, from whom she was separated at birth.



14. Thousands of volunteers spent 96 weeks clearing garbage from Versova Beach in Mumbai. Thanks to this, hundreds of thousands of sea turtles were born on the beach for the first time in decades.



15. The owner of a house in Kansas turned on automatic watering before taking refuge from a forest fire. This is what he saw upon his return.



16. Dr. Barry J. Marshall was sure that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori caused ulcers, but no one believed him. Since he was legally unable to test this theory on humans, he infected himself with the bacterium. Within a few days, he developed ulcers, which he treated with antibiotics. He received the Nobel Prize for his discovery.



17. At Boston College, children of employees are entitled to free education - provided they are able to enroll. One janitor sent five of his children to college this way, saving about $700,000.



18. One day in the Netherlands, an ambulance took a woman to hospital with hypoglycemia, but two paramedics stayed at her home to prepare lunch for her five children. And they even washed the dishes after that.



19. Studies have shown that cats understand commands, but prefer to ignore them.



20. An Australian named Bill Morgan survived a 14-minute clinical death. To celebrate being alive, he bought a lottery ticket and won a car worth $27,000. When asked to repeat the trick during an interview, he bought another ticket and won the $250,000 jackpot.



21. This horse got stuck in the mud. Her owner, Nicole Graham, held her head down for three hours to keep her from choking until they got help.



22. In 2001, Koko the gorilla met Robin Williams and, thanks to him, smiled for the first time in six months. In 2014, when Williams passed away, Coco showed the word “cry” in sign language when she heard the news.



23. Actress Hedy Lamarr, who was called “the most beautiful woman in the world,” was also a mathematician and inventor. She invented frequency hopping technology, which is used in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. At first her discovery was dismissed, and then other people appropriated it. All her life Lamarr dreamed that others would notice not only her beauty, but also her intelligence.



24. At the Enoteca Maria restaurant in New York, ordinary grandmothers work instead of professional chefs. Every day a new grandmother comes up with a new menu of dishes traditional to her country.



25. The couple reunited after 60 years of separation. They were married for only three days when the man went into the army, and met again only 60 years later, when, by chance, they arrived in their hometown on the same day.



26. In 2014, a three-year-old girl spent 11 days in the forest in Siberia with her dog. She ate berries, drank water from a stream, and slept cuddled with a dog to keep warm. The dog eventually found its way to the village and returned with help.



27. One day, Gordon Ramsay was filming an episode of one of his cooking shows in prison and challenged the prisoner to compete with him in chopping onions. The prisoner won. When he was released from prison, Ramsay took him to work in one of his restaurants in London.



28. Mozart did not like the opera singer Adriana Ferrarese del Bene. Knowing her way of lowering her head on low notes and throwing her head back on high notes, he wrote a composition with constant jumps from low notes to high notes, so that on stage she would “shake her head like a chicken.”



29. When Matt LeBlanc auditioned for the role of Joey Tribbiani in Friends, he only had $11 in his bank account. When the actors received their first fee for the series, the first thing he did was eat a normal hot meal.



30. In the USA, if a dog needs a new kidney, the organ is allowed to be transplanted from a stray animal. With one condition: the donor dog must then be taken home in order to “save two lives instead of losing one to disease and the other to euthanasia.”