Historic Things We Learned That Left Us Stunned

Ralph Teetor, born in 1890 in Hagerstown, IN, became one of the greatest inventors of the mid-20th century.Ralph Teetor became one of the greatest inventors of the mid-20th century.At age 5, Teetor played with a knife and accidentally blinded one eye. Less than a year later, he lost sight in his other eye due to sympathetic ophthalmia, a condition where trauma to one eye damages the other.

Teetor earned an engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He worked for his family's business, the Teetor-Hartley Motor Co., which made automobile engines and other goods. During WWI, he developed a process to balance steam turbine rotors for the US Navy. After WWI, he joined his family in Perfect Circle to perfect piston rings.

He started working on a mechanism to control and regulate a car's speed. This device aimed not only to cap speed but also to limit gasoline use. Teetorreceived a patent for his speed-control invention, which he named Speedostat, in 1950.Teetor received a patent for his speed-control invention, which he called Speedostat, in 1950.

In 1958, Chrysler offered Speedostat as an extra feature for luxury models. Soon, the mechanism became standard for all Chrysler vehicles. Other makers followed. When Cadillac added the feature, the company called it Cruise Control.

Teetor's many inventions simplified mechanical processes across many fields. Despite limited resources then, he seemed unaffected by his lack of sight. His cruise control device opened the way for future inventions.

In January 1961, a mishap nearly destroyed the entire Eastern Seaboard of the USA. An Air Force bomber broke in half, dropping two nuclear bombs outside Goldsboro, NC.

Previously classified documents from theNational Security ArchiveDocuments released on June 9, 2014, showed the two Mark 39 devices were near detonation. Neither device exploded.

Both multi-megaton Mark 39 devices were in the "safe" position. The impact force started mechanical actions needing human input. The "fuzing sequence" began in both cases, a step toward arming an atomic device. The device closest to detonation landed whole. By the time the second one hit the ground, it was in the "armed" setting due to the crash impact. The arming switch that stopped the first device from exploding was very weak.

The 1961 Goldsboro incident shocked Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who laterstated"By the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted."

In 1943, a group of Polish soldiersadopted an abandoned bear cubin Iran whose mother was believed to have been fired at and killed. The soldiers recently left the Gulag in the Soviet Union. They immediately fell in love with their pet cub. They taught him to salute and regularly wrestled and swam with him.

Soldiers and their cub faced trouble preparing for combat where pets were banned. Thus, the cub joined the 22nd Artillery Transport Company of the 2nd Corps. They gave him a serial number, the rank of private, and the name Wojtek, meaning “joyful warrior.” Wojtek loved beer and cigarettes, which he ate.

Wojtek fought with his human friends, and evenhe helped move ammunition crates.After WWII, Wojtek went to the Edinburgh Zoo. Old comrades regularly visited him there.

The Taiping Rebellion resulted in more than 20 million deaths.Taiping RebellionThis revolt, spanning 1850 to 1864, devastated China and nearly ended the ruling Qing dynasty. It may be one of the most overlooked stories in the Western world.

Hong Xiuquan led the Taiping Rebellion. He was a former civil servant who believed he was Jesus Christ's younger brother. He and his friend Feng Yunshan formed the God Worshippers’ Society.

He and his followerssoughtto overthrow the powerful Qing dynasty. They sought to empower the disenfranchised through property sharing in an early form of communism. They also tried to ban gambling, alcohol, prostitution, foot binding, opium, and tobacco. Hong named his new dynasty the Taiping Tianguo (“Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace”).

Hong claimed Jesus relation. His Christianity followed Old Testament vengeance. The uprising lasted 14 years of intense fighting.

American and British forces helped defeat large parts of the Taiping army. Hong took his own life. The Qing dynasty never fully regained power after the rebellion. China would never be the same for the estimated 20 million Chinese who died.

In 1985, AmericanMike Dunndecided he wanted to take the group ofgreatest adventurers on Earthto the North Pole.

Dunn invited Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person recorded to climb Mount Everest with teammate Tenzing Norgay, and NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, to join him.

Steve Fossett, the first man to fly a balloon around the world, and Patrick Morrow, the first person to climb the highest mountains on all seven continents, joined Hillary and Armstrong.

Armstrong remained quiet, a sharp contrast to the loud Hillary. Dunn, Fossett, Morrow, and Hillary's son, Peter, flew small planes between small outposts. They stopped at Ellesmere Island, their last stop before flying to the North Pole. Upon arrival, the gentleman opened a bottle of Champagne, which froze fast, and planted a barber's pole in the ice.

Bad weather stopped their trip home. The men stayed in a hut on Ellesmere Island for three days. They shared stories. They tried to stay warm in temperatures 40 degrees below zero. They returned home safely with another adventure story.

In February 1926, the new Bolshevik Russian government took full power. It chose to fund a strange scientific experiment. Ilia Ivanov was a Russian biologist who specialized in artificial insemination and making animal hybrids, like a zebra mixed with a donkey, called a zeedonk.Ivanov's mission went past odd animal hybrids. He traveled to New Guinea, fully supported by the Bolshevik government, to try and artificially inseminate a human woman with ape sperm.

The experiment failed. Ivanov searched for women willing to carry a half-human, half-ape fetus and tried to get sperm from healthy chimpanzees and apes. In 1930, Ivanov and other Russian scientists moved to Kazakhstan, and the project stopped.

Ever since Ivanov's scheme became public in the 1990s, many people questioned why the Russian government backed this plan. Perhaps they wanted to create a type of super-race soldier, or maybe they sought to prove Charles Darwin's ideas about evolution. The Bolsheviks wanted to get rid of religious belief and might have thought science experiments would achieve that goal, no matter how silly the science seems now.

Nolan Bushnell'sentertainment-focused inventions brought about some of the biggest innovations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. A University of Utah graduate, Bushnell created what became the first computer game, calledComputer Space, in 1970, but the game proved too complex for many people. The next year, Bushnell released his next game,Pong, which became a huge hit. When the game machine was set up at a bar in Sunnyvale, CA, it broke down after too many people played it and it was too full of quarters to keep going.

In 1972, Bushnell made Atari with his friend Ted Dabney. Atari's games includedPongandAsteroids, and in 1975, Bushnell and Dabney made a deal with Sears to supply a home version of the Atari that worked with televisions.

Bushnell's inventions constantly looked ahead. As the popularity ofPongandAsteroids grew, arcades became more wanted. Bushnell decided to open his own chain, starting Chuck E. Cheese in 1977 as a pizza place, arcade, and family spot.

The highest seat in the Catholic religion has a lurid history. The period of unscrupulous leadership was very scandalous. called the Pornocracy.

The seat of St. Peter is an elected job. It once held great political power and wealth. It is not surprising that such power and wealth drew men to seek the role of pope, even if their reasons were not good.

From the mid-8th to the 11th centuries, darkness covered the papal court. Lack of religious education caused literacy to drop. Scandal filled the papal courts during the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries. The papacy operated largely by women from the late 800s to the mid-900s; the church and historians called these women "whores."

Pope Sergius III held office from 904 to 911. He took a mistress, Theodora, wife of Roman consul Theophylactus. Theodora claimed to be a senator of Rome and controlled Sergius completely. When she left Sergius for another lover, that man became Pope John X.

Church historians often blamed evil women for problems in Rome. They avoided blaming the men who caused many scandals that damaged the Catholic Church. Much of what we know about Theodora and her daughters Theodora and Marozia comes from this desire to place blame on women.

Church historians blamed evil women for many issues. The Pornocracy, however, involved men who sought power and ignored all moral and religious rules to get it.

When Walter Arnold formed the Arnold Motor Carriage Co. in London in the late 1890s, he led the way in developing the horseless carriage. He did not know his invention would also seal his reputation because he was the first person in Britain to receive a speeding ticket.Walter Arnold received a speeding ticket.

Before Arnold Motors made its own vehicles, Walter Arnold imported a 1.5-horsepower Benz from Germany for testing. On January 28, 1896, Arnold drove a country road in Kent. An aggressive police officer chased him on a bicycle and took him to the Tonbridge police court.

Arnold was charged with breaking the 2 mph speed limit while driving at 8 mph. He was also charged with operating a carriage without a horse or the required three people at the helm. He paid a fine of 4 British pounds and 7 shillings.

Ten months later, Britain changed laws. New rules allowed for a new class of horseless carriages that did not need three crew members or had a higher speed limit.

King Béla I of HungaryBorn around 1020 CE, Béla I had a difficult childhood. His father, Prince Vazul, was passed over for the throne by his uncle, King Stephen, who chose a different nephew. Vazul rebelled, and Stephen blinded him in retaliation. Vazul's three sons, including Béla, fled to Poland.

Years later, the brothers returned. Béla's eldest brother, Andrew, took the throne. Political trouble started when Andrew named his son his heir instead of following the Hungarian custom of giving the crown first to a king's brothers, not his sons.

Béla led his own revolt against his brother in 1060. Andrew died, and Béla became king. During his time as king, he fought the Holy Roman Empire and his nephew.

In September 1063, Béla's wooden throne fell, and the king suffered mortal injuries. His nephew took the throne and likely built a newer, steadier one.

Wernher von Braun, born in Germany in 1912, became obsessed with space exploration after reading science fiction as a child. He earned a doctorate in physics, and like many Germans, he joined the army.Former SS officers helped NASA reach the Moon.He joined the German army. In 1940, Heinrich Himmler asked him to become an SS officer after he worked on missile and rocket technology.

In 1944, the Gestapo detained von Braun for criticizing the SS at a party. Around that time, he started planning his future after Germany fell.

Von Braun and his team surrendered to Americans in 1945. They moved to the US Army Ordnance Corps test site at White Sands, NM, continuing their research for the US. He became an American citizen in 1955 and was named director in 1960.NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.He helped launch the first American satellite. He developed large space launch vehicles that would take American astronauts to the Moon.

Von Braun's legacy.Some bakers tried making their own butter. Other Norwegians complained about the lack of Lussekatt buns (saffron buns for the St. Lucia tradition) and Christmas biscuits. An elderly Norwegian reportedly complained, "I brought up my four children under German occupation but this is nothing like that."He helped American scientists. He criticized the SS. He supposedly tried to save men in internment camps he thought deserved help because of their science. Still, he gained from his SS officer position.

In 2011, Norwegians faced a butter shortage as Christmas approached. Baking traditional treats seemed impossible.

Various things caused the shortage: low-carb dieters, bad weather, and Norway's high tariffs on imports. The country's largest dairy co-op faced criticism for not warning farmers and for exporting butter while demand grew.

Some bakers tried making their own butter. Other Norwegians complained about the lack of.Lussekatt.Buns (saffron buns for the St. Lucia tradition) and Christmas biscuits. An elderly Norwegian.Reportedly complained."I brought up my four children under German occupation but this is nothing like that."