6 The US Air Force’s Boeing Stratofortress aircraft accidentally dropped two nuclear bombs on North Carolina after it broke apart in mid-air in 1961. The bombs were each 250 times more destructive as the Hiroshima ones and could have created a 100% kill zone in a radius of 8.5 miles. Fortunately, the bombs didn’t explode.

The crash happened at midnight on 23 January 1961 over Goldsboro, North Carolina. The plane was carrying two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs, and each one carried a payload of four megatons, which is actually equivalent to four million tons of TNT explosives.

The cause of the accident was reported as excessive fuel leakage. As soon as the crew learned about the fuel leakage of 17,000 kilograms, they immediately turned to return to their base.

When the flight was at 10,000 feet, the pilot, Walter Tulooch, lost control of the plane and ordered the crew to abandon the flight. Five of the crewmates successfully ejected at 9,000 feet. The other two ejected but didn’t safely land and died.

One of the bombs released by parachute had completed all the arming sequence but didn’t explode because the parachute got caught in a tree.

The second one was found in a muddy field. It had plunged into it at an estimated speed of 700 miles per hour. It had completely disintegrated, and explosives did not detonate. (1, 2)

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7 Al Capone, the infamous gangster, started a soup kitchen named “Free Soup Coffee & Doughnuts for the Unemployed” during the Great Depression in Chicago. The kitchen served all three meals to 2,200 unemployed and hungry Chicagoans every day.

During the bleak November of 1930, the so-called “Public Enemy Number One” organized a free meal center to feed the unemployed. Nearly 75,000 gathered in a line to register themselves for the meal, and almost one-third of them had immediate relief.

The total number of meals he sponsored went above 120,000 despite having a limited number of employees in the kitchen working to serve all three meals a day.

None of the hungry people were denied, nothing was asked of them, and they didn’t even need to prove their needs.

Later, a Capone associate mentioned that Capone couldn’t stand the poor creatures starving and nobody doing anything about it, so he decided to do it himself.

Because of this incident and many others where he did some philanthropic work, he was looked at as a hero of the common man by many Americans.

However, Capone did not use any of his personal wealth to run the kitchen. He bribed and extorted businesses to donate goods. (1, 2)

8 In 1962, two American scientists found that a huge rock face on a mountain in Yungay, a town in Peru, could collapse and wipe out the town. After reporting it, the government asked the two to retract the warning and threatened that if they didn’t, they’ll face prison. The scientists fled the country, and the locals were forced to never speak of the potential disaster. Eight years later, the rock face actually collapsed because of the Ancash Earthquake killing 20,000 people.

Yungay is a town in the Ancash Region in Peru. The two American scientists, David Bernays and Charles Sawyer, saw a massive vertical slab of rock being eroded by the glacier present on Mount Huascaran Norte and reported that it could fall and cause huge damage to Yuga.

The government responded naively and asked the two to retract their statement, and the natives were also asked to keep their mouths shut about it.

The warning came true when the Ancash Earthquake took place on 31 May 1970. The earthquake caused a debris avalanche on the Yungay killing 20,000 people, leaving just 400 survivors. The debris slid up to 15 kilometers with a speed of 620 meters per hour at its peak velocity.

The town was declared as a national cemetery by the government, and excavation was also forbidden. The new town was rebuilt two kilometers to the north of the old, destroyed town. (source)

9 Navy Admiral Edward Russell hosted a six-day-long party in 1694 in Spain that centered on a cocktail that was mixed in a big fountain. The bartenders rowed around the fountain in canoes to serve drinks to the 6,000 guests.

Hosting this type of party is actually a social ritual called “Punch,” and it was prevalent in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Punch was very common in navy celebrations for some time, and in 1694, the Navy Admiral hosted one Punch party for his crew in Alicante.

The cocktail was kept in a local fountain, and it consisted of four hogsheads of brandy, 500 liters of wine, 20 gallons of lime juice, 2,500 lemons, 66 kilograms of sugar, five pounds of nutmeg, and 2,000 liters of water mixed in it.

The party was attended by 6,000 people, and drinks were served by bartenders sitting in canoes and rowing around in the fountain. (source)

10 During the 1887 mayoral elections, a group of men that were against women in politics placed the name of a woman on a slate of candidates as a prank. They were overly confident that a sure loss would be humiliating for women, and it would prevent them from joining politics. The woman with the name on the slate, Susanna Salter, actually ended up winning the election by a two-thirds majority, becoming the mayor of Argonia, Kansas, and America’s first female mayor.

Salter didn’t have any clue about her name being written on the ballot until the polls opened on 4 April 1887 because candidates were not supposed to be made public before election day.

When she learned about the situation, she agreed to accept the office in case if she got elected. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union withdrew their support for their preferred candidate and voted for Salter.

The Republicans also voted for her after she accepted the delegation which was sent to her at her place by the local Republican Party chairman himself. All of this helped her win the elections and become one of the first women to serve in any political office in the US.

The news of this surprising event spread nationwide when the press showed some interest in the case. The event also achieved popularity as far as Sweden and South Africa via newspapers.

Salter only served for a year and declined to seek re-election in 1888. (1, 2)