Solution to Strange but True quiz.

Hard to pick a winner for this quiz, among the correct but incomplete responses and the complete but incorrect responses. Credit to francopoli, bfv and b-612 for confirming several true stories.

Billion Dollar Day

This was the true story of George Soros and his Quantum Fund betting against the British pound, which was unrealistically pegged to the Deutsche Mark. I am not sure how much of the billion in profit went to Soros, but that's the way the story is usually told.

City Raising

This was the Raising of Chicago. Business continued as normal while engineers lifted entire buildings with jackscrews.

Fuel

I see the factoid that coffee is the world's #2 commodity here and there, but it's difficult to fact-check. The author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee looked into it and found that natural gas, copper, aluminum, gold, wheat, and cotton fabrics have total value in annual trade greater than coffee. Someone found a footnote saying that "Coffee is the second most valuable commodity exported by developing countries." Credit to flagamuffin for healthy skepticism.

Great Stork Derby

True story: the prize was the estate of "Toronto lawyer, financier, and practical joker Charles Vance Millar."

Jump

Perhaps not surprising that Senior Vice President at Google Alan Eustace had funds to break the skydiving altitude record, but I was surprised that I never heard about it, after all the hoopla around the Red Bull stunt.

Keep on Ticking

This was a lie, inspired by the Antikythera mechanism, a remarkable device which may have predicted some eclipses, but probably was not accurate to five decimal places, and did not calculate square roots or logarithms.

McScraper

The World's littlest skyscraper was built 480 inches tall, according to plan (recognized as legitimate by a local judge).

Mummy Brown

Yes, people ground up mummies to make paint until they ran out of mummies.

Oman, Must be Nice

I made up this collection of stereotypes without checking to see how true it might be somewhere. When I looked into it my imaginary emirate did not seem so farfetched. Citizens (but not guest workers) do enjoy a lot of benefits, but I couldn't find anything as cozy as a $35,000 stipend for an 80% idle population. Typically citizens are obliged to go through the motions at a government-provided sinecure to get paid. I also read of long waits for government-provided housing, and of course an underclass which for one reason or another doesn't get all the benefits.

¡Soy del Norte!

Río Rico occupies part of the Horcón Tract, which was on the south side of the Rio Grande after a diversion in 1906. The land was not officially ceded until 1977, and a deportation case led to recognition of people born in the area to be recognized as U.S. citizens by birthright.

See, am_Unition, three lies! A one-sided true/false quiz would be devious indeed.