The Best Knowledge Bomb Fun Facts This Week 1/20/23

Here are the best Knowledge Bomb fun facts from the Mikey & The Mrs Show this week.

• The Oompa Loompas in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" were originally called Whipple Scrumpets.  Roald Dahl changed their name at the last minute.

• Elon Musk was not one of the original founders of Tesla.  He came on board in 2004 after the company had been around for about six months . . . and invested $7.5 million to join the board of directors.

• When John Quincy Adams was president in the 1820s, he would swim naked in the Potomac River at 5:00 A.M.

• Pilates was started in an internment camp.  A German athlete named Joseph Pilates was locked up by the British, and came up with a way for his fellow German inmates to exercise when they were sick and stuck in bed.

• Ikea is an acronym.  The "IK" is for the founder's initials, Ingvar Kamprad.  The "E" is for Elmtaryd, which is the farm he grew up on in Sweden.  And the "A" is for Agunnaryd, which was his home village.

• The U.S. has been in debt for its entire history . . . except for one year, from 1835 to 1836, when Andrew Jackson was president and managed to pay it all off temporarily.

• When Franklin Pierce was president, he was arrested for running over an old woman with his horse.  The charges were eventually dropped because of a lack of evidence.

• There's a regulation in Connecticut that says a pickle has to be able to BOUNCE to be legally classified as a pickle.

• In the 1800s, there was a superstition in the New England area that tuberculosis was caused by vampires.

• Albert Einstein was so sure he was going to win a Nobel Prize that he included the prize money in a divorce settlement three years before he won it.

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