Napoleon

The myth of a short Napoleon partly stems from measurement unit confusion. His 168 cm was 5 pieds 2 pouces in French units, which the British misread as 5 feet 2 inches (158 cm). He was actually taller than the average French man of his era at 164 cm.

In 1807, the Portugal royal family fled to Brazil to escape Napoleon. In 1815, Rio de Janeiro became the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves—a rare case of a European nation having its capital on another continent.

Napoleon once lost a chess match to the 'Mechanical Turk,' a machine that seemed to play on its own. It wasn't artificial intelligence — a person was hidden inside making the moves. People were fooled because lifelike automata were fashionable at the time.