100 Mind-Blowing Autonomous Facts That You Didn't Know

Before colonial rule, Africa comprised up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups with distinct languages and customs.

There’s a mountain in Greece that women are prohibited from visiting. It’s not just the mountain, but an entire peninsula called Mount Athos. You see, Mount Athos has been home to a collection of monasteries since at least the 4th Century AD. For more than a thousand years, if not longer, the presence of women has been banned not just from the monasteries but from the whole peninsula. Mount Athos is an autonomous region of Greece controlled by the Greek Orthodox Church. According to the Church, the Virgin Mary blessed the peninsula and made it her holy garden, so no other women were allowed to be there. Other than wild animals and a few cats, the animals there are also all male.

General Motors made the first self-driving car model. Elon Musk wasn’t the brain behind autonomous cars. In 1939, General Motors was able to create a model for a self-driving car that relies on electromagnetic fields and magnetized spikes on the roads.