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149 short, true stories behind the things you use every day. Each one names its source.
In 1943 the US banned sliced bread.
Answer to read the story.For seven weeks, partly to save on wrapping. Read the story
For 59 years, no pope would step outside the Vatican
When Italy took Rome in 1870 and made it the capital, Pope Pius IX refused to accept it.
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Moscow's clocks are still on the summer time of 1930
At midnight on June 21, 1930, the Soviet Union moved every clock forward an hour for the summer. In the fall the hour stayed.
The lowest shore on Earth drops more than three feet a year
The Dead Sea's shore is the lowest dry land on Earth, and it keeps getting lower.
This acacia was once called the most isolated tree on Earth
For about 300 years an acacia grew in the Ténéré, a part of the Sahara in Niger, and for decades it stood alone. Salt caravans steered by it, and nobody cut it for firewood.
Egypt and Sudan each insist this desert belongs to the other
Bir Tawil is about 800 square miles of desert on the border between Egypt and Sudan. Neither country claims it.
For 13 years, Portugal was ruled from Rio de Janeiro
In November 1807, with a French army a day from Lisbon, Portugal's royal family and court sailed for Brazil.
Two countries brought the same flag to the 1936 Olympics
At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Liechtenstein's team noticed that Haiti's flag was identical to theirs: two plain stripes, blue over red.
The likely designer of the US flag asked to be paid in wine
In 1780 Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, told Congress he had designed the flag of the United States.
In 1969 the American Falls at Niagara ran dry on purpose
In June 1969 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the river above the American Falls, and the water stopped. For about five months the falls was a bare cliff.
Canada and Denmark fought over a rock with flags and liquor
Hans Island is half a square mile of bare rock between Canada and Greenland.
149 stories. Ten free a day.
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