5 things you might not know or you haven´t seen…
1.) Maybe the longest sword ever used by a fighter in man to man combat
This sword is 2,13m (7 feet) long and belonged to Pier Gerlofs Donia aka Grutte Pier, a 16th century Frisian (Area in The Netherlands and Northwestern Germany) rebel and pirate who was even slightly taller than his sword. Grutte means big and he literally towered above his contemporaries measuring 2,15 (7,1 feet) and lived from somewhen in 1480 to 28 October 1520. Even though the size of the sword is impressive it just weights about 6.6 kilograms (14.6 lb). Picture was taken in 1951 at the Museum of Friesland in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, where the sword is still on til display today.
2.) US Air Force cats in zero gravity
No joke, in 1947, the US Air Force wanted to test the abilities of cats in a zero gravity environment. I would love to know who came up with the idea and asking people for money to see what happens when cats experience weightlessness. I would put that stuff very close to animal cruelty, and they didn´t stopped with cats, but tried pigeons and other animals as well. In case you wonder, not even a cat can land on its feet in weightlessness.
The experiment happened in a Convair C-131 airplane, often called the “Vomit Comet,”. The plane follows a parabolic flight path; climbing steeply up and then nose-diving back towards the Earth. The maneuver creates about 15 seconds at zero gravity.
3.) There was an atom-bomb like explosion in ancient China
The so called Wanggongchang Explosion, happened on May 30, 1626 in Beijing. It killed over 20.000 people and up till today nobody knows exactly what happened this day. The force released by the explosion could be compared to the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in WW2. The explosion so immense that it was heard even beyond the Great Wall, over 150 kilometers away and debris rained down over 30 kilometers in radiusof the epicenter. Interestingly enough. there were even reports of a mushroom shaped cloud hanging over the southwest of the city but that is not confirmed.
The cause of the explosion is still in discussion, starting from being uneducated handling of gunpowder, a tornado, an earthquake or even meteors. Here a more detailed article about it.
4.) A dead person wins a horse race
In 1923 New Yorks Belmont Park horse race, the animal trainer Frank Hayes had to step in as a jockey to ride the 20:1 outsider called “Sweet kiss”. He had never won a race before, the man and the horse. Frank suffered a heart attack in the middle fo the race but his body stayed in the saddle until his horse crossed the line victorious with the dead body of Frank still attached on his back. He was and still is the only dead person who won a horse race.
5.) Stalins night witches
I found out about this group of incredibly tough women after listening to a song of one of my favorite bands, but the story is so fascinating that it should be known by more people. It was not only Amelia Earhart, but also a bunch of fearless russian women who dared to fly airplanes that today nobody would even touch.
The Night witches flew under the cover of darkness in bare-bones plywood biplanes, attacking Nazi formations on the ground. They were feared and hated so much by them that any German airman who downed one was automatically awarded the prestigious Iron Cross medal.
The Germans nicknamed them the Nachthexen, or “night witches,” because the whooshing noise their wooden planes made resembled that of a sweeping broom. “This sound was the only warning the Germans had. The planes were too small to show up on radar or on infrared locators