The famous story of America spending millions developing a Space Pen, while Russians used a pencil is FALSE.

It's a classic cautionary tale on government excess: the American government wastes millions of dollars developing a pen that can write upside down, while the more resourceful Russians just used a pencil instead. It'd be a good story, if it were true.

In reality, the "Space Pen" was developed by a private company and were both cheap AND used by Russian astronauts as well. The Space Pen cost NASA $1.98 a piece, and the company benefited from being marketed as the Space Pen and it sold great among the general population. It was so successful that the Russian astronauts started using it too!

The kicker is this: pencils would be a terrible idea inside a space ship. Think about it: you have to sharpen them, which causes debris, the tips could break, which causes debris, if you erase something, it causes debris, they're flammable, they break easily. Can you imagine a pencil tip floating into a delicate piece of space ship machinery? It's a pretty widespread legend... but it's bull.

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The Sony Playstation was originally a joint project with Nintendo!

In the early 1990s, Nintendo was interested in moving away from using cartridges (remember those?) because they tended to be less durable than CD-ROMs. They approached Sony and Phillips separately to develop a CD drive for the Super NES called the SNES-CD.

When the SNES-CD was about to be revealed in a 1991 conference, Nintendo President realized that their contract with Sony gave them complete control over any and all titles written on the SNES CD-ROM format. He secretly cancelled all plans to develop with Sony and instead announced that they were partnering with Phillips to develop the attachment. 

Sony, instead of just taking their loss and dropping their research, decided to use what they had developed. The end result was the Playstation. The rest is history: the Playstation went on to become of the best selling consoles ever and it dethroned Nintendo as the dominant console maker when it went head to head with the Nintendo 64. 

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Delta once argued they should pay less for gay plane crash victims than straight ones!

In the rare occasion of a plane crash, the aftermath for the victims' families is not just about the grief of losing a loved one. They have to go through a long and arduous process of determining how much their loved one was worth. One of the key measures that they calculate is "future earnings," the idea being that a family should be compensated for the amount of money that the victim would have made if he'd stayed alive. 

In a 1985 court case, Delta somehow uncovered that one of the passengers was gay, something that the victims' parents didn't even know! They then argued that because he was gay, he was more likely to contract AIDS, which would lower his life expectancy, and therefore, his future earnings. 

In the end, Delta's argument did not gain any traction with the judge. Delta apologized for this stance only a couple of years later.

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Until 2011, according to the FBI crime reporting guidelines, men cannot be victims of rape.

The FBI definition of forcible rape is set in page 19 in the UCR Guideline: The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will, which means men do not fall under this category. 

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Update: On Oct. 20th 2011, the FBI voted to change the definition to be more inclusive. Read it here