Interesting Facts

30th July 762 – Baghdad was founded. 1866 – New Orleans's Democratic government ordered police to raid an integrated Republican Party meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150. 1965 – US President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid. 1975 – Jimmy Hoffa disappeared from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He was never seen or heard from again. 2003 – In Mexico, the last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line. 2006 – The world's longest running music show, Top of the Pops, was broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years. 2006 – At least 28 civilians, including 16 children were killed by the Israeli Air Force in Lebanon. 2005 - Anthony Walker, a British student was murdered in a racially motivated crime. 2007 - The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to ...

The pineapple wasn't known in Europe until 1493, when Christopher Columbus landed on the Caribbean island of Guadaloupe and  the sailors ate, enjoyed and recorded the curious new fruit. (But the pineapple wasn't cultivated successfully in European hothouses, and pineapple pits, until around 1720. It became associated with great wealth, and you can see the pineapple motif on many historic buildings and in art and carvings etc.  It was so highly regarded that King Charles posed with his gardener John Rose, as he presented King Charles with the first pineapple grown in England.)

US and Canadian experts say that Christopher Columbus introduced syphilis to Europe. (You can just imagine it can't you. Syphilis may I introduce Europe? Europe, this is Syphilis.)