The monumental 1986 nuclear accident in Chernobyl didn’t completely close the plant. The last reactor remained active until 2000.

7UP used to contain lithium, a psychiatric mood-stabilizing drug.

Cleopatra lived closer to the release of the iPhone in 2007 than to the completion of the Great Pyramid of Giza in 2540 BC. In fact, mammoths continued to roam the Earth for a thousand years after the pyramid was finished.

We’ve been pronouncing Dr. Seuss’s name wrong the whole time. It’s “soyce,” not “soose.”

As an experiment in language acquisition, a Minnesota linguist spoke only Klingon to his son for the child’s first three years. He said it eventually became clear the boy—now a teen who speaks no Klingon—wasn’t enjoying the experiment,
so he stopped.

Sorry Switzerland, the Romans invented your knife. A multi- purpose gadget dating from 200AD has been found to consist of a spoon, fork, blade, spatula, toothpick and a spike that may have been used to remove snail meat from its shell.

Cholesterol plays a crucial role in keeping you alive in spite of its bad rep. It actually helps keep cell membranes rigid and is crucial for digestion.

In the original story of Pinocchio, published as a newspaper serial in the 1880s, the wooden boy kills Jiminy Cricket with a hammer.

“Auto-Brewery syndrome” is a medical condition where a digestive tract yeast infection, combined with the consumption of starch, results in honest-to-god beer being produced in the intestines. The sufferer is rendered intoxicated.