- In 1952, Albert Einstein was offered the position of the second President of Israel. He declined.
- In the Great Fire of London in 1666, which destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 churches, the cathedral of St. Paul, and left 70,000 homeless; only 8 people were killed.
- King Tut was born with a diseased/club left foot and was buried with 130 of his walking sticks. DNA testing revealed his mother and father were siblings.
- John Hume was on the of musicians who died while playing on the Titanic. His booking firm sent a bill to his father two weeks later for a “lost uniform.” His father wrote to The Amalgamated Musician’s Union newsletter to tell everyone never to hire anyone from C.W. & F.N Black again.
- The Parliament of Iceland is the oldest, still-operational parliament in the world. It has been in existence since 930.
- The old Pony Express has been romanticized in modern times, but it was a financial failure. The mail delivery service actually lost an average of $13 for every item it carried, and went out of business in 18 months.
- April 23, 1982. Key West in Florida declared it was seceding from the U.S. It declared war, followed by a surrender, and a request for a billion dollars of foreign aid.
- While there are currently no female players in Major League Baseball, there have been plenty of women in professional men’s leagues. Lizzy Arlington pitched during the ninth inning for the Reading Coal Heavers in 1898 and won her team the game. A little over 30 years later, African-American Jackie Mitchell pitched against the Yankees during an exhibition game, striking out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
Um… Mitchell was 17 years old at the time. - Think today’s athletes are overpaid? Roman chariot racer Gaius Appuleius Dioclese won more than half of his 1,900 races, earned $15 billion in adjusted winnings, and survived to retire peacefully at 42.