Every year, about a dozen Japanese tourists are sent home to the "Paris syndrome"

Paris is a city held in high regard in films and television. There's a romantic vision of cobbled streets, beautiful women and high culture and art. While this is for the most part true, Paris is also a very busy and active city that does not always resemble the highly stylized vision that is usually put on film.

Every year, about millions of Japanese tourists come to Paris with that image of the city in their heads, only to face the reality that the city is not entirely how they pictured it. And the reality of it can cause shock. Tourists might have encounters with rude taxi drivers, or waiters who are rude to people who don't speak fluent French.

The shock causes about a dozen tourists a year to have a nervous breakdown so intense, that the Japanese embassy has had to send back tourists with a doctor or nurse on board of the plane to help them get over it! The term "Paris syndrome" was coined by a Japanese psychiatrist who works in Paris. Culture shock is such a problem that the embassy also has a 24-hour hotline for those who are suffering and need help!

Google unsuccessfully tried to sell itself in 1999 for $1 million

Remember Excite.com? Neither do most people. However, they were big cats in the search engine business right before the year 2000. Back then, Google was not the behemoth it is nowadays; in fact, it was still a project from Stanford Graduate students who thought it was taking too much time that would be better spent studying. 

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the creators of Google then went to Excite and tried to sell him the search engine for $1 million. Apparently this was a laughable proposal for then CEO, George Bell. He not only rejected their offer, he also threw an Excite venture capitalists out of his office when he tried to negotiate them down to only $750,000! This has gone down in history as one of the dumbest business decisions ever. 

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The Chevrolet emblem is based off of a wallpaper design from Paris

When you think Chevy don't you think manly? Well, suprisingly, the design for the emblem of this many car company was inspired by dainty wallpaper from a hotel in Paris.  

There are several stories about the logo but this one is the most famous and popular.  It is said that the co-founder of Chevy, William Durant, saw the pattern on a wallpaper and fell in love with it. 

So next time you see a Chevy commercial with Eminem music playing in the background remember that the emblem originated on wallpaper in Paris. 

Oo lala!

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Cats were used as live shields by the Persians

During the battle of Pelusium in 522 BC, Cambyses II, the King of Persia, used cats as leverage against Egyptians. He knew that Egypt revered cats, so during various ocassions, him and his soldiers would use cats as shields knowing that the Egyptians would be too scared to strike them in fear of hurting the cats.

Other tactics included simply letting the cats loose in the battlefield, and creating chaos in the egyptian armies. It was against Egyptian law to hurt or kill attack, so in many occasions, for fear of accidentally hurting a feline, the Egyptians would surrender the city.

None of the actors of “The Empire Strikes back” knew that Vader was Luke’s father.

All of the cast and crew was given a false scripted page where the famous line  “Luke, I am your father” was replaced by “Obi-Wan killed your father”.
They wanted to keep the Darth Vader - Luke relationship secret, so they went as far as fooling the entire cast and crew. Prowse, the man who spoke all of Vader’s lines during the filming didn’t find out about the change in the line until moments before scene was filmed.
Until the film premiered, only George Lucas, Irvin Kersher, Hamill and James Earl Jones knew what would really be said during that line.