You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

[Lee Stewart]

Scotland's largest lake by volume at 7,452 cubic meters, Loch Ness holds more fresh water than all the lakes of England and Wales put together. If any body of water could secretly house a giant mythical sea monster, it's this one.

[Lee Stewart]

Le Palais Idéal is an 85-foot-long, 33-foot-high castle 30 miles south of Lyon made from rocks that a 19th-century French postman picked up during his mail route over the course of 34 years. Despite having precisely zero formal architectural training, he built the massive structure himself, complete with pillars, grottoes and flying buttresses—and visitors still go out to view it today.

[Lee Stewart]

All those Kit Kat bars that are somehow made imperfect during production—due to air bubbles, weirdly shaped wafers, or some other issue—aren't tossed out, but instead ground up into a fine paste and turned into a filling that's then incorporated back into the production process to create new Kit Kat bars. It's the circle of candy life.

[Lee Stewart]

Of all the organs in the human body, the liver is the only that can regenerate on its own. As researcher Richard Bowen explains, "The liver has a remarkable capacity to regenerate after injury and to adjust its size to match its host. Within a week after partial hepatectomy, which, in typical experimental settings entails surgical removal of two-thirds of the liver, hepatic mass is back essentially to what it was prior to surgery."

[Lee Stewart]

Vikings were some of the toughest dudes in history, but they cared about their appearance enough that makeup was a standard part of their look, regardless of gender. According to the National Museum of Denmark, "A Spanish Arab who visited Hedeby around the year 1000 described how both men and women in the town wore makeup to look younger and more attractive

[Lee Stewart]

It might seem like he was in the wrong line of work. Harrison Schmitt, from the Apollo 17 mission, found out that he had a severe allergy to moon dust

[Lee Stewart]

The official bird of Redondo Beach, California, is the Goodyear Blimp. In 1983, the coastal city adopted a resolution to make the legendary aircraft the official city bird, even presenting a plaque to a team from Goodyear Airship Operations to commemorate the decision.

[Lee Stewart]

The $5, $10, $20, and $50 bills have all been redesigned in the last decade or so, with the Federal Reserve adding color and watermarks to outsmart counterfeiters. But the dollar bill has remained unchanged since 1963. The reason why it's not been updated, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, is that this denomination "is infrequently counterfeited."

But another possible reason to take into account is likely the lobbying done by the vending-machine industry, which would have to redesign its machines to accommodate new bills should the current design get an overhaul.

[Lee Stewart]

You can see where your dollar has been and where it's going by using the site: Where's George. Just enter the serial number of the dollar in your wallet, and you can find out what zip codes it's passed through to get to you and keep an eye on where it heads after you spend it.

[Lee Stewart]

The pyramid on the back of the bill represents the young United States, with 13 steps representing the original 13 colonies, and an unfinished top reflecting the growing and expanding the country still had to do. The "Eye of Providence" at the top represents an all-seeing god—but not, as some conspiracy theorists would tell you, the Illuminati.