Japanese superstitions. Before battle, Japanese samurai painted their faces, horses and teeth, and left a hole in their helmet through which the soul could escape.
100 Mind-Blowing Before Facts
Commitment to the cause. Colonel Sourd, Napoleon’s 2nd Lancers, fought all day on horseback at Waterloo. He’d had his arm amputated, no pain relief, the day before.
Self-mummification. A 1,000-year-old Chinese Buddha statue was taken to a Dutch hospital for a CT scan in 2017. The scan revealed a mummified monk inside the golden figure with its internal organs missing. The monk was believed to have self-mummified before being encased in the statue.
‘Blackening the bride’. In rural parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland, a tradition known as ‘blackening the bride’ was practised in the 18th and 19th centuries. Just before a wedding, friends and family would cover the bride and groom with all sorts of messy substances, such as soot, mud and feathers. This custom was believed to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck to the couple.
Two significant car crashes. On 13 December 1931, Winston Churchill was struck by a car while crossing Fifth Ave in New York City. He had looked the wrong way before crossing the street and was dragged for several yards, sustaining bruises, sprains and cuts. In the same year, a 19-year-old British aristocrat named John Scott-Ellis was driving a red Fiat in Munich and almost hit the future Führer, Adolf Hitler. Scott-Ellis jumped out of his car and apologised, and Hitler only suffered minor bruises. They shook hands, and Scott-Ellis later remarked, ‘For a few seconds, perhaps, I held the history of Europe in my rather clumsy hands. . . [Hitler] was only shaken up, but had I killed him, it would have changed the history of the world.’
Dancing mania. In July 1518, Frau Troffea began dancing in chaotic fervour on the streets of Strasbourg. She danced for a week straight, and soon others joined her. Within a month, the Dancing Plague of 1518 claimed between 50 and 400 victims. Historical sources make it clear the victims danced, but why they did so remains unexplained. Mysterious outbreaks had occurred before: in 1020s Bernburg, Germany, a Christmas Eve service was disturbed when revellers inexplicably danced around the church. In Aachen, 1374, a large-scale outbreak was recorded that spread to Cologne, Flanders, Hainaut, Strasbourg, Utrecht and other towns. In 1428 in Schaffhausen, a monk even danced himself to death.
Emu war. In 1932 the government of Western Australia declared war on emus, a native bird species that was damageing crops in the region. The government sent soldiers armed with machine guns to hunt the emus, who proved elusive. Despite firing thousands of rounds of ammunition, the soldiers were able to kill ‘only a few’ emus before the government declared peace after less than a week.
Microsoft tried to stop the spread of Linux for many years before finally admitting defeat and joining The Linux Foundation in 2016.
The cost of hacking is increasing (FBI and McAfee): The FBI revealed that although they considered the cost of cybercrime to be around $3.5 billion for the US in 2019, the actual toll could be a lot higher because many exploits and attacks go unnoticed. Even without a clear view of unreported crimes, the cost of cybercrime is increasing significantly every year. McAfee found the costs of an attack are increasing, but that the costs of manageing an event before and after an attack are higher now too.
Hacking attacks increased significantly during 2020 (Iomart): According to studies from Iomart, the number of cyberattacks, hacking, and their resulting costs have increased significantly during 2020. The number of breaches increased by around 273% during the first quarter of 2020, compared to the same period in the year before. Not only has the number of attacks increased, but the severity of the hacks is higher too. According to Japanese brand, Honda in June, a hacking attack hitting internal production systems cost the company around $250,000 in bitcoin.
Stamps originated in the United Kingdom: Sending letters was expensive before postage stamps were introduced. In May 1840, the first stamp was issued in the UK, it was called ‘the Penny Black’, and featured Queen Victoria. The advent of the postage stamp made it cheaper to send letters and caused an increase in sending postcards, letters and Christmas cards.
Before the London Eye was constructed, there was another Ferris Wheel in London called The Gigantic Wheel but it was demolished in 1907.
The United Kingdom First Invented Stamps: Before the introduction of postage stamps, mail delivery was expensive. The first stamp ever released in the United Kingdom was called “the Penny Black”, and it showed Queen Victoria. It was released in May 1840. With the invention of the postage stamp, sending letters, postcards, and Christmas cards became more affordable.
Money dates way back: Money has been a part of human history for at least 5,000 years. Before then, a system of bartering was likely used. The world’s oldest coin dates back to 600 BCE in China, which then moved to paper money around 700 CE. But for parts of Europe, it took until the 16th Century to switch from metal coins to paper money.
Paper money enabled international trade: Once the shift to paper money had occurred, international trade began to increase. Currency value began to depend on the strength of a particular country’s government or monarchy and before long, currency wars had started.
Before money was made of bills and coins, these items were used as currency: conch shells, ivory, clay, live animals and grain. As long as it was divisible and scarce, it could be deemed “money”.
The US “$” sign has long been in use to represent foreign currency before the issue of the first US dollar in 1875. Not only that, but the “$” symbol never has, nor does it now, appear on any US currency.
The dollar symbol $ appeared long before the American currency and even before the United States. $ is an amalgamation of the letters Ps, short for the Mexican peso, which was heavily used in the United States before its currency. The sign became so entrenched in the United States that they continued to designate American dollars.
Before it becomes completely unusable, a bill manages to pass through the hands of 30-50 thousand people. By the way, the smaller the denomination of a banknote, the faster it wears out.
On April 3, 2018, an incident occurred at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California. Nasim Najafi Aghdam shot three people before taking her own life.
With the aid of AI, Canadian startup BlueDot predicted the coronavirus pandemic before the world knew what was going on – and about to happen.
The ability to nap in your car while on your commute to work is much closer than you think. Elon Musk announced that Tesla will offer self-driving cars in less than a year – May of 2023. As this announcement has been made before without any actual launch, take it with a grain of salt.