Ginger beer is brewed and fermented with ginger, while ginger ale is merely carbonated water flavoured with ginger.
100 Mind-Blowing Merely Facts
Alaska had a cat mayor. Another interesting fun fact: The Alaskan town of Talkeetna had a cat as mayor for 20 years. You read that right – this feline was affectionately called Stubbs (for his lack of a tail) and served as the town mayor from 1997 to 2017. Stubbs didn’t have to do much official business, since the little town was merely a historic district and tourist spot.
Subway footlongs don’t measure a foot long. Man, talk about false advertising. A fun fact you probably don’t know about this beloved sandwich joint is that Subway faced a 2013 lawsuit for their “foot” longs. The food chain explained that the Subway Footlong is merely a brand name and not meant to be the actual measure of the sandwich. The case was then promptly thrown out.
It turns out that you don’t need to drink six to eight cups of water per day. Water is without a doubt one of the most important things on our planet, and since around the 1940s, it’s been popularly believed that you should drink about 84 ounces (2.5 litres) of the stuff every day to stay healthy. Researchers have since delved deeper into the issue and concluded that you don’t need to drink anywhere near that much, as you get a lot of water from the food you eat. Instead, you’re merely advised to drink when you’re thirsty and drink extra on particularly hot days.
Abercrombie & Fitch once offered the cast of Jersey Shore significant amounts of money to stop wearing their clothes. The American retailer feared that the association between the questionable reality TV series and their clothes would hurt their image overall. Ironically, the clothing brand’s stock value dropped by 9% on the first day of trading after the offer was sent to the cast of Jersey Shore, but this is said to have merely been a coincidence.
Hackers uncovered a flaw in Hotmail’s security in 1999, which allowed access to any Hotmail email account by entering “eh” as the password. This crippling flaw was deemed to be “the most widespread security incident in the history of the web.” The group that took responsibility for the flaw’s exposure, known as Hackers Unite, claimed that they didn’t want to destroy anything by leaking it but rather wanted to draw seemingly much-needed attention to Microsoft’s failing security systems. Experts believe that the ability to access any email account with a simple password was unintentionally left behind as a “backdoor” by Microsoft’s engineers, something Microsoft has never admitted. Instead, they merely palmed it off as an “unknown security issue.”
The Great Fire of London of 1666 destroyed the houses of 70,000 inhabitants of the city but there were merely six verified deaths.