20 Facts I Learned This Week That Are So Interesting, They Will Live In My Brain For As Long As I Live
Johnny Carson banned former co-host Joan Rivers from ever appearing on The Tonight Show after she decided to leave NBC for her own Fox show. When Jay Leno took over the show, he decided to uphold the ban out of respect for Carson. In 2014, Jimmy Fallon became the new host of the late night series, and invited Rivers to appear on his first episode, 49 years to the day of her first Tonight Show appearance.
1.While you might already know that Ben Affleck is a pretty big Boston Red Sox fan, did you know that his love for the team is so intense that it nearly caused an on-set shutdown? In 2015, director David Fincher asked Affleck to wear a Yankees cap on-screen while filming Gone Girl. According to Rolling Stone, Affleck refused, citing his love of the Red Sox. The dispute allegedly launched a "one-man riot" that lasted four days, and ended with Affleck sporting a New York Mets hat instead. Affleck confirmed the story to the New York Times, telling them that he refused to don the Yankees apparel because he knew he "would never hear the end of it" from his fellow Sox fans.
2.Princess Diana's relationship with Prince Charles was pretty unconventional from the get-go. Diana and Charles actually went waaaaay back. Diana's older sister, Sarah, dated Charles in 1977. The relationship didn't last long. "There is no chance of my marrying him. I'm not in love with him," she said in 1978. "And I wouldn't marry anyone I didn't love whether he were the dustman or the King of England." Charles and Diana were introduced by Sarah at a party in 1977. "I remember thinking what a very jolly and amusing and attractive 16-year-old she was," he said in 1981. "I mean, great fun, and bouncy and full of life and everything."
After that initial meeting, Charles and Diana didn't see each other again until 1980, when they both were invited to stay at a mutual friend's house. According to Diana, Charles was going through it emotionally after a recent breakup and the death of a close friend. "He leapt upon me and started kissing me, and I thought, urgh, this is not what people do," she said. "And he was all over me for the rest of the evening, following me around like a puppy." Despite Diana's mixed reaction to Charles, the pair started dating soon after. They reportedly only met in person 13 times before Charles proposed.
3.Pooping can be life-threatening for a sloth. Sloths have an incredibly slow metabolism — it can take them up to a month to digest a meal. As a result, sloths typically only poop once or twice a month, with their bowel movements clocking in at roughly a third of their body weight. Their bathroom routines are sometimes deadly. Three-toed sloths normally do their business on the ground instead of from the trees where they spend the majority of their time. Sloths have very little muscle mass, and often struggle to support their weight while crawling on the ground, making them incredibly easy targets for predators.
4.On February 14, 1929, a group of unarmed Chicago mobsters were killed in what has since been dubbed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The George “Bugs” Moran gang controlled most of the bootlegging on Chicago's North Side, and also ran several casinos and brothels. That morning, several of the gang members traveled to a garage that the gang typically used for storage, likely to complete a job. Around 10:30 a.m., a car with several men, including two in police uniforms, pulled up to the garage and found the seven mobsters inside. Although the gang members were likely all armed, eyewitness accounts claim that none of them pulled their weapons when the intruders arrived in the garage, perhaps because of the police uniforms.
The intruders raised their weapons, instructed the mobsters to get away from the windows and doors, and immediately began firing. Six of the men were killed instantly, with the seventh, Frank Gusenberg, severely injured after being shot 14 times. When police arrived at the crime scene, Gusenberg allegedly refused to talk to the cops, although some reports say that he eventually muttered, "Cops did it." Gusenberg was taken to the hospital, where he died shortly after. Soon, the attention turned to figuring out who was responsible, with many pointing fingers at Al Capone and his gang. At the time of the massacre, Capone was at a Florida courthouse, where he was being interviewed about his potential involvement in the murder of Capone's former mentor.
As news about the murders began to spread, Capone reportedly felt incredibly confident that he wouldn't be accused, given his alibi. Some thought the police truly were behind the crimes, while others pointed fingers at Detroit's Purple Gang, who were allegedly seeking payback after one of their whiskey trucks had been hijacked. Authorities also investigated potential links between the murders and a recent election where Capone and Moran supported competing candidates. Moran was even considered a suspect at one point. Meanwhile, US attorney George E. Q. Johnson was looking to finally put Capone behind bars, even though he couldn't find any direct evidence to indict the gangster. President Herbert Hoover was also desperate to arrest Capone to prove that he was serious about eliminating crime.
In December 1929, Fred “Killer” Burke was arrested for shooting a police officer. Ballistic evidence connected Burke's gun to one used during the massacre. Burke refused to cooperate, and died in prison in 1940 without ever answering any questions related to the killings. In January 1935, Bryan Bolton, a bank robber looking to shorten his prison sentence, told authorities that Capone was responsible for the murders. Bolton's story had holes, but led to the reveal of a letter that claimed William “Three-Fingered Jack” White organized the massacre to get revenge for the death of his cousin. The cousin was the son of a police officer, thus explaining the men at the scene wearing police uniforms. The issue? White had been killed in 1934, so police couldn't go after him for the crime. The case was closed, and Capone was eventually arrested on a charge of felony income-tax evasion.
5.After astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American man in space in 1961, Chevrolet gifted him a Corvette. Both General Motors and NASA were unsure about the gift: Astronauts were not allowed to endorse products, and GM worried that it would set a precedent where they would have to give cars to all future astronauts. Instead, the company decided to develop a new program. Astronauts could lease up to two Chevrolets a year for the low price of $1. Six of the seven astronauts on the original Mercury mission ended up participating in the program, each leasing both a family car and a Corvette. Many of the Apollo astronauts later took advantage of the special offer as well.
