1. In Pascagoula, Mississippi in 1942, a phantom barber broke into several people's homes and cut their hair while they were sleeping. (Source) (via)
2. Benjamin Franklin served on the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, but it has been said he was not to chosen to draft the document for fear that he may conceal a joke in it. (Source)
3. Henry V of England was the first English king to speak English as a primary language. (Source)
4. There is a Greek legend that says Zeus sent a flood to destroy humanity, but Deucalion, son of Prometheus, built an ark to ride the flood out. Afterwards, he and his wife repopulated the earth. (Source)
5. Back in the 1990's during a massive power outage in Southern California, some Los Angeles residents called 911 to report mysterious lights in the sky. The lights were the Milky Way, which they weren't used to seeing because of all the Los Angeles lights. (Source)
6. It is said Napoleon entered the Great Pyramid and then came out pale and shaking. He refused to speak about it, but hinted that he had seen a vision of his future. (Source)
7. In 1625, an English invasion of Spain was called off because the soldiers stopped in village in the wine producing region of Andalusia and got to drunk to carry on. (Source)
8. Archduke Francis Ferdinand was wearing a bulletproof vest when visiting Sarajevo in 1914. It did him no good since he was shot in the neck though. (Source)
9. Telling ghost stories at Christmas was a Victorian era tradition (hence the verse from Andy William's "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" about telling scary ghost stories). The tradition has mostly faded away now, except for Charles Dicken's classic tale A Christmas Carol. (Source)
10. Swiss-born watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz built a robotic boy capable of writing in the 1700's. (Source)
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