1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (98 page)

FACT :
From 1915 to 1918, 2 million Armenians in Turkey were slaughtered or deported from their historic Asia Minor homeland by the Turkish government, which also demolished ancient cities, architecture, and records,
removing nearly all traces of the 3,000-year-old civilization
.
”Would you like to be slaughtered or deported?” “Hmm, let me think. I guess I’ll go with deported.”

“Armenian Genocide,” The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute,
www.genocide-museum.am
.

738

FACT :
The German luxury ship
St. Louis
sailed to North America in 1939, carrying more than 900 European Jews seeking safe refuge from Germany’s Nazi government.
The ship was turned away by both Cuba and the United States
and returned to Europe, where many of the fleeing Jews were later captured and executed by the Nazis.
You’ve heard of FDR’s New Deal. This was the Raw Deal.

“The Tragedy Of The St. Louis,” Chapter 113, The American Jewish Historical Society,
www.ajhs.org
.

739

FACT :
An estimated 7 million people died during the Ukraine famine of 1932–1933,
about 25,000 a day
at its peak.

The famine was engineered by Joseph Stalin to destroy the region’s drive for independence.

“Ukrainian Genocide of 1932– 1933,” Ukrainian Genocide Famine Foundation-USA, Inc.,
www.ukrainiangenocide.com
.

“Ukranian Famine,” Ibiblio.org,
www.ibiblio.org
.

740

FACT :
By the end of World War II in 1945,
nearly all of Europe’s Jewish population
had been wiped out by the Holocaust: 4 million in Adolf Hitler’s death camps, and 2 million in ghettos in Warsaw, Theresienstadt, and other cities.

“The Holocaust,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
www.ushmm.org
.

741

FACT :
China’s Chairman Mao Zedong was a ruthless leader whose policies wiped out millions of Chinese. In the 1950s, Mao’s so-called “Great Leap Forward” of collective farming and rapid industrialization led
to famine throughout China
, killing as many as 35 million people.

“1976: Chairman Mao Dies,” On This Day, BBC News,
http://news.bbc.co.uk
.

742

FACT :
China’s Cultural Revolution, started by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 to purge opponents, dragged on for 10 years and
slaughtered tens of thousands
of Chinese citizens.
And that concludes this episode of “History’s Biggest Buttholes.”

“China’s Communist Revolution: A Glossary,” BBC News,
http://news.bbc.co.uk
.

743

FACT :
Illinois passed a law in 1853 that levied a $50 fine on any black person from another state who
spent more than ten days there
. If the person was unable to pay the fine, he could be sold into slavery.
The law was moot. Most people got bored within a day and split. I mean, it’s Illinois.

Isaac Asimov, ed., Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts (Hastings House, 1979).

744

FACT :
Fourteen years before the Titanic sank, a novel titled
Futility
told the story of an ocean liner named Titan that met its demise one April night when
it collided with an iceberg
.
A novel that didn’t sell a lot of copies, I’m guessing.

Facts Library,
www.factlib.com
.

745

FACT :
In July 1945, a B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building in New York,
engulfing six floors in flames
. Amazingly, only fourteen people died: the crash happened on a Saturday and the building was all but empty.
Hopefully they were stockbrokers.

David Wallechinsky, The New Book of Lists: The Original Compendium of Curious Information (Canongate U.S., 2005), 397.