Page 46 - The 'X' Zone Book of Triviology

o Because a Nicaraguan stamp showed a volcano, the U.S. built a canal through Panama instead. o Tiny Morocco was the first country to recognize the U.S. as an independent country. o When slavery ended, some 40,000 African Americans became cowboys. o If people asked Al Capone what he did for a living, he would say he dealt furniture. o Connecticut, Georgia, and Massachusetts waited until 1941 to ratify the Bill of Rights. o The original Bill of Rights would have kept federal politicians from raising their own salaries. o The U.S. was the first independent country in the New World. Haiti was #2. o An army of cowboys called gauchos helped win freedom for Uruguay. o In a 1933 election, Canada’s ruling Progressive Conservatives lost 153 of their 155 seats. o The first European to set foot in Australia was a Dutch sailor who’d been blown off course. o From 1790 to 1800, the capital of the United States was Philadelphia. o Garfield was the last U.S. president born in a log cabin. Carter was the first in a hospital. o Thomas Jefferson invented the dumbwaiter, a swivel chair, and a lamp heater. o Robert McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense in the 60s, had a strange middle name: Strange! o Ironically, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America banned the slave trade. o The main speaker at Gettysburg spoke for two hours, Lincoln spoke for two minutes. o Watergate conspirator H.R. Haldeman ended up owning Sizzler restaurants in Florida. th o George W Bush is the great-great-great-great nephew of 14 president Franklin Pierce. o Pope Leo X had a pet elephant. o Italy’s notorious Medici family had a dollhouse inhabited by dwarves. o In 1794, Congress rejected a petition to make the U.S. bilingual - English and German. o Genghis Khan demanded 1,000 virgins a year as tribute from conquered territories. o Ivan the Terrible blinded Russia’s best architect so he couldn’t build nicer buildings for others. o The Sumerians invented cuneiform writing in 3500 B.C. o The United States Civil War created almost a half million morphine addicts. o A socialist wrote the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. o During World War I, Charles De Gaulle was injured three times at the Battle of Verdun. o In 1996, when Mikhail Gorbachev ran for the presidency of Russia, he got 0.5% of the vote. o Every U.S. president with a beard has been a Republican. o The real John Birch was killed by the Chinese 10 days after World War II ended. o Jimmy Hoffa was last seen alive at the Machus Red Fox restaurant. o Columnist and writer Ambrose Bierce vanished while following Pancho Villa. o Sarajevo caused trouble before. The death of an archduke there started World War I. o Pliny the Elder died of curiosity when he sailed too close to Mt. Vesuvius to get a look. o Lenin, Ho, Chi Minh, Mao, and Evita Peron were mummified after they died. o Frederick Douglas named himself a character in a Sir Walter Scott poem. o The first language of African-American heroine Sojourner Truth was Dutch. o When the NAACP was founded in 1909, its only black officer was its newspaper editor. o In his 90s, civil rights leader, W.E.B. Dubois joined the American Communist Party. o Booker T Washington was the first black person on a U.S. stamp. o Albert Einstein’s brain was left in some mason jars behind a cooler in a doctor’s office. o Tennessee Williams died after he choked on a nose-spray bottle cap. o The day JFK was killed in Dallas, Richard Nixon was across town at a Pepsi convention. o As part of MK-ULTRA, the CIA tested LSD as a mind-control weapon. o Some believe that the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry was founded by the Knights Templar.