1. There’s only been one seven-foot player in the NFL. Richard Sligh was exactly seven feet, and played defensive tackle for the Oakland Raiders for one season in 1967.
2. The guy who invented the parachute died testing it. His name was Franz Reichelt, and he was a tailor in France. He invented the first parachute in 1912, used it to jump off the Eiffel Tower, and died when it didn’t quite work right.
3. The space shuttle Enterprise was originally going to be called the Constitution. But hundreds of thousands of “Star Trek” fans wrote to President Gerald Ford petitioning for the name.
4. Iceland has only been in two wars: The Age of the Sturlungs from 1220 to 1264, and the Cod Wars from 1958 to 1976. And they’ve only had one casualty.
Here is today’s bonus fact:
5. No actor or actress won an Oscar for a performance in a Steven Spielberg movie until Daniel Day-Lewis did in 2013, for “Lincoln”.
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