USA
The USA swapped a Hellfire missile's warhead for six folding blades — the AGM-114R9X "Ninja Missile." It deploys them just before impact, slicing the target with no blast — just a hole in a roof. In 2022 it killed al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri on a Kabul balcony.
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In 2011, France had to destroy an armored vehicle in a Libyan city. Their fix: a 300 kg concrete bomb — a casing of concrete, not explosives. No blast, no shrapnel; the GPS-guided block smashed the vehicle on impact. The USA had used the trick in Iraqi no-fly zones since the 1990s.
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USA physician Samuel Cartwright announced a fake mental illness in 1851 supposedly afflicting only Black slaves: "Drapetomania." Symptom: "the urge to flee the plantation." Cures: whipping and amputating big toes. The term remained in Stedman's Medical Dictionary until 1914.
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In 1981, the Reagan administration in the USA tried to classify ketchup as a vegetable to meet school lunch nutritional standards after cutting budgets. The backlash slogan "Is ketchup a vegetable?" became so powerful that the policy was reversed.
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In 2024, an Indiana court in the USA ruled that tacos and burritos are "Mexican-style sandwiches." A taco shop owner had fought a lawsuit for about 18 months to open a second location on land restricted to "sandwich bar-style restaurants."
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In 1939, a Harvard freshman swallowed a live goldfish on a $10 bet, sparking a craze across American universities. The rivalry escalated to a record of 89 fish, and an "Intercollegiate Goldfish Gulping Association" was even founded to ensure fair competition.
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The concept of jaywalking was invented by the USA automobile industry in the 1920s. The "jay" in jaywalking was a derogatory term meaning "rube," deliberately coined to shift blame for traffic accidents onto pedestrians. Dutch traffic law still has no concept of jaywalking.
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Guano, formed from accumulated seabird droppings, was so valuable as fertilizer and gunpowder material that it sparked wars. In 1856, the USA passed the Guano Islands Act, allowing it to claim any uninhabited island with guano deposits—and the law remains in effect today.
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Until the 19th century, the Red River in the southern USA had a 260km-long natural log jam called the "Great Raft." Accumulated over centuries, grass and trees even grew on top of it, allowing people to walk across the river.
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The term 'spam mail' comes from Monty Python's comedy sketch 'Spam.' During World War II, the US supplied massive amounts of SPAM cans to Britain, and the Brits' frustration inspired the sketch. The name later stuck to annoying promotional emails.
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The largest living organism on Earth is a mushroom. In Oregon, USA, a single honey fungus in Malheur National Forest spans an area larger than 1,000 football fields.
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