AWESOME FACTS ABOUT EVERYTHING XXI

1. The New York Stock Exchange was founded in 1792.

 

2. A memorial statue of FDR stands in London's Grosvenor Square.

 

3. Major League Baseball has a nearly 200-page rule book. One of the rules: You can't catch a ball with your hat.

 

4. Charles Ponzi (1882-1949) was an Italian con artist and swindler. In the 1920's he orchestrated a scheme in The United States involving postage stamps where people would invest money for a high return. There was no real product or profit. Old investors were paid off with the money from new investors. The phrase Ponzi scheme is his legacy. The greatest Ponzi scheme in history - by far - was the one perpetrated by Bernie Madoff form the 1980's to 2008. It is estimated to have defrauded investors of 20 billion dollars before it collapsed in the Great Recession of 2008.*

5. It's illegal to buy or sell a mattress on Sunday in the state of Washington.

6. CHTHONIC is a valid word. It means "infernal" or "pertaining to the underworld." It's pronounced THanik - with the "a" as in "talk".

 

7. Dogs can be trained to sniff out a variety of types of cancer, including cancers of the skin, breast, and bladder. They are trained by sniffing samples of the cancers compared with cancer-free samples. 

 

8. The Chernobyl meltdown, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion have all been attributed to a lack of sleep.

*Bernie Madoff died in federal prison on April 14, 2021, twelve years into a 150-year sentence.