Page 48 - The 'X' Zone Book of Triviology

o Had Queen Mary had any children, England might still be a Catholic country. o Despite the Shakespearean play, Richard III was not a hunchback. o In 1813, a British doctor turned some of King Charles I’s vertebrae into a saltshaker. o King John managed to lose the crown jewels while riding across an inlet in the North Sea. o Had Edward VIII not abdicated, Elizabeth would not have become queen until 1972. o If Prince Charles doesn’t change his name he will become King Charles III. o The Great Pyramid of Giza is found today in a suburb of Cairo. o It’s not true that Napoleon knocked off the Sphinx’s nose because he was too African. o Mahatma Gandhi used to sleep with naked young women as a way of testing his celibacy. o David Ben-Gurion, who led Israel through two wars, was actually born in Poland. o Rolihlahla Mandela’s school teacher renamed him Nelson for Horatio Nelson. o Ayatollah Khomeini’s real name was Ruhollah Moussavi. o Until World War II, Winston Churchill was known mostly for his disastrous political failures. o Despite a reputation for vigor, Teddy Roosevelt needed nitroglycerin pills for his heart. o Nobody knows who it was that stood in front of the tanks going into Tiananmen Square. o Although Charles Lindbergh opposed the U.S.’s entry into World War II, he flew 50 missions. o The Liberty Bell was nearly sold for scrap metal in 1828. o Charles Dickens’ son Francis was a Mountie. o In 1943, Fred Rose became the only Communist ever elected to the Canadian Parliament. o Soviet spy Igor Gouzenko had to defect twice in Ottawa before anyone believed him. o Romans flavored food with garum, made by leaving fish to rot for several weeks. o Julius Caesar made history by crossing the Rubicon, but today we don’t know where it is. o Britain’s Prime Minister is also First Lord of the Treasury. o In 1829, the Duke of Wellington dueled Britain’s Prime Minister in Battersea Park. o Hitler personally saved one Jew from the death camps: Richard Strauss’s daughter-in-law. o The original quisling was Norwegian fascist Vidkun Quisling. o Josef Mengele drowned in Brazil in 1979, where he had been living as Wolfgang Gerhard. o Charles Lindbergh once worked with Dr. Alexis Carrel on an artificial heart. o In 1839, Maine and New Brunswick, Canada, fought a bloodless “War of Pork and Beans.” o Doc Holliday was indeed a doctor, specifically a dentist. o During WWII, the U.S. never declared war on two Axis powers: Thailand and Finland. o The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first in which opposing ships never saw each other. o Although Mildred Gillars was Axis Sally, no one woman was Tokyo Rose. o Despite what you may have heard Mussolini never did make the trains run on time. o Grand Rapids, Michigan, was the first city to fluoridate its water. o In 1739, Britain and Spain fought the War of Jenkins’ Ear. o In the 1880s, the British used a travel agency to get their troops to Khartoum, Sudan. o When Hitler won the Iron Cross during World War I, a Jew pinned the medal on him. o Tamerlane once piled 70,000 heads in a pyramid outside a city he was attacking. o The world powers outlaws war under the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact. It didn’t work. o The Aztecs sacrificed up to 15,000 people a year to their sun god. o Outlaw Ned Kelly wore homemade armour in his last stand against the Aussie authorities. o Naples is the birthplace of pizza. o Statistically speaking, the Bermuda Triangle isn’t very dangerous at all. o In Egypt the poor bathed by rubbing themselves with castor oil; the upper class used olive oil.