1. In 2003, Guinness recognized Jose Castelar's 45-foot cigar as the longest ever made. Then Castelar smoked it, which took five days.
  2. In 1983, an engineer and his family fled to Austria from Communist Czechoslovakia in a homemade hot air balloon made from old raincoats and propelled by domestic propane. Guards shot flares at them
    but missed.
  3. The placebo effect can help with weight loss. In one experiment, people told a milkshake was high in calories were far less hungry than people told it was a low-cal shake.
  4. In 2020, Gary Duschl added the 2.5 millionth link to his chain of chewing gum wrappers. It weighed more than a thousand pounds and stretched 20 miles.
  5. In 2002, a Chinese peasant uncorked a liquor bottle and was bitten by the snake inside, which had been trapped for about a year. The porous stopper had allowed enough air into the bottle for the snake's survival.
  6. In 2020, a 74-year-old Florida man saw a gator grab his puppy, Gunner, in a backyard pond. He jumped in, pulled both animals to the surface, pried open the gator's jaws, and freed his dog.
  7. Thanks to "Finding Your Roots," Anderson Cooper learned that an ancestor had been blugeoned to death by a slave. Cooper's response? "He had 12 slaves. I don't feel bad for him."
  8. A biology teacher had students design a diet following federal nutrition guidelines with nothing but McDonald's food, including Double Cheeseburgers. After 3 months, he'd lost 37 pounds.
  9. When Donald Trump visited Pearl Harbor, John Kelly, his chief of staff, was shocked to learn that Trump didn't know what had happened there.
  10. In 1859, tightrope walker Charles Blondin cooked and ate an omelette while crossing Niagara Gorge on an 1,100-foot rope.