Nicolas Sarkozy is the only democratically elected monarch in the world

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is a prince of Andorra, this makes him the only democratically elected monarch in the world. The Principality of Andorra is a tiny nation sandwiched in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain.

The principality of Andorra is a tiny landlocked nation in between France and Spain. The nation was created through a 1278 treaty between France and Spain. The treaty was arranged so that there were two co-princes that ruled over the land. One is the Bishop of Urgell, who is of course, appointed by the Pope. The other used to be the Crown of France, which disappeared with the French Revolution and gave way to the French Republic.

This unique arrangement means that the president of France is the only democratically elected monarch. Despite this, though, he's not elected by his subjects. The president is elected by the French and not by the Andorrans.

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thought Houdini was really magical!

The famed author of the Sherlock Holmes series may have seem to be someone who relied heavily on fact, but in fact he was an avid believer of the mystical arts. Doyle was a long time friend of Harry Houdini, the famed magician, and the two constantly argued over the subject of magic.

Houdini was an avid opponent of the Spiritualist movement in the 1920’s and worked to expose many frauds, however Doyle became convinced that Houdini himself had real powers. When Houdini was unable to convince Doyle that his feats were illusions, the two had a bitter public falling out and never spoke again!

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Elephants heard the deadly 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami coming

When the 2004 tsunami struck coasts along the Indian Ocean, it was not a sixth sense that made elephants run for the hills, often carrying unsuspecting tourists on their backs to safety. It was because they heard the tsunami coming.

A tsunami is a very long water wave, its wavelength hundreds of miles long in the deep ocean. But in shallow water near land the wavelength shortens. The tsunami waves produce waves in the atmosphere of the same wavelength, which happens to be the wavelength of very low-frequency sound (called infra-sound).

It is too low in frequency for humans to hear, but the elephants can hear these sound waves. And in 2004 when they heard a thundering roar coming from the sea, they ran the other way as fast as they could. Anyone for establishing an Elephant Tsunami Warning System? For more Ocean facts check out Dr. Bruce Parker's book: The Power of the Sea

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September 16th is the most popular birthday in America!

Public health record indicate that birthdays in America are for the most part evenly distributed throughout the year, yet for some reason September 16th has more children born than any other day!

Why is this? There tend to be more births in September and October because there is a holiday season nine months prior and the longest nights of the year in the Northern Hemisphere fall nine months before those two months.

Also, based on Harvard research on birth records, December 25th is the least common birthday!  

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Chevy Chase escaped the draft by falsely claiming he had homosexual tendencies!

Chase, whose full name is Cornelius Crane Chase, studied in a couple different colleges. He graduated from Bard College in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts in English.

He had studied pre-med during his undergraduate, but didn’t enter medical school, which made him subject to the military draft. In 1989 on the late-late Pat Sajak Show, he shared how he convinced his draft board that he deserved a 4-F Classification. He based it on falsely claiming, among other things, that he had homosexual tendencies.

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