James Dean’s car curse
In September 1955, James Dean was killed in a horrific car accident whilst he was driving his Porsche sports car. After the crash the car was seen as very unlucky.
1) When the car was towed away from accident scene and taken to a garage, the engine slipped out and fell onto a mechanic, shattering both of his legs.
2) Eventually the engine was bought by a doctor, who put it into his racing car and was killed shortly afterwards, during a race. Another racing driver, in the same race, was killed in his car, which had James Dean’s driveshaft fitted to it.
3) When James Dean’s Porsche was later repaired, the garage it was in was destroyed by fire.
4) Later the car was displayed in Sacramento, but it fell off it’s mount and broke a teenager’s hip.
5) In Oregon, the trailer that the car was mounted on slipped from it’s towbar and smashed through the front of a shop.
6) Finally, in 1959, the car mysteriously broke into 11 pieces while it was sitting on steel supports.
10 Things to Be Done If You’re Kidnapped and Held to Ransom
1. Wonder if you will get a kickback. 2. Ask them to show you their licenses or passports to check the registration because you tend to support only domestic producers, not Iranian hoodlum who down-hilled yesterday.
A ship sunk near the shores of Wales on December 5, 1664. Another ship went down on the same location on December 5, 1785. A third ship sunk to the bottom of the sea on the same location on December 5, 1866. Each of the shipwrecks had only one survivor. In all the three cases, a survivor’s name was Hugh Williams. Twin brothers Jim Lewis and Jim Springer were separated at birth and adopted by different families. Unknown to each other, both were named James, both owned a dog named Toy, both married women named Linda, both had a son they names James Alan, and both eventually divorced and got remarried to a woman named Betty.
King Henry IV of England thought he would die in battle. A zealous crusader, he dreamed of conquering the holy land and returning it to Christian control. Affairs at home delayed his crusade; however a prophecy made to him years earlier claimed that he would die in Jerusalem, a prediction which he took very seriously. Extremely ill through most of his reign, he defiantly told those around him that he couldn’t die in England, as he still had not yet set foot in Jerusalem. As his health declined and death seemed near, he was brought to a room in the home of the Abbot of Westminster. He asked if the room in which he lay had a name. He was told that it was called the Jerusalem chamber, after which he promptly died.
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In 1958, a New York City father named Robert Lane decided to call his baby son Winner. The Lanes, who lived in a housing project in Harlem, already had several children, each with a fairly typical name. But this boy—well, Robert Lane apparently had a special feeling about him. Winner Lane: How could he fail with a name like that?
Three years later he had another son, and on the spur of the moment decided to call him Loser. As the Freakonomics authors say about his decision, "Robert wasn’t unhappy about the new baby; he just seemed to get a kick out of the name’s bookend effect." If the guy had a third son he should have called him "Lover." That, at least, would have fit with the last name.
A lot of different questions are of interest to psychologists. For instance, which professions are the most honest? According to Gallop survey the most trustful are priests. 59% of people consider them to be honest-minded. The least honest are considered car shop assistants. Only 5% of respondents trust them. However, which professions deserve trust in reality? Are auto show workers so unprincipled and church attendants so moral? This question was of big interest to Professor Richard Wiseman and he made an experiment to check the truth of this stereotype. 
As a legend says, Gabriel García Márquez (1927), who worked as a journalist, when turned 32 years old, sat down to table and said:
“That’s it. I will not go at work, I will not go for any stuffs at all.
I will not rise from the table till I write a novel.”
“But how about us?”, asked his wife with child.
“Just as you like!” answered Márquez. /In his novella No One Writes to the Colonel in similar situation the character answers to his wife who asked “Wheat we should eat?” – “Shit.”/
To Márquez’ wife’ credit be it said, she didn’t argue. She started working and bringing stuffs on herself. A year or two. This way the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude was written.
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On the morning of April 20th, 1864 Gridley appeared on the street with a 50 lb. sack of flour, decorated with American flags and bunting. He wanted to auction it and give money for soldiers in the United States Army. That day 300 more people bought the flour (total sum $8 000 for soldiers). Then they put the "Sanitary Sack" up for symbolic auction again and again in other parts of Nevada and California.
One local worker won the first round with a very large bid of $250. The question: "Where to deliver the sack?" he answered: "Nowhere. Put it for auction once again."
All told, the otherwise ordinary sack of flour had raised some $275,000 for the U.S. Sanitary commission during its career.
A fantastic sum.
