42 Odd And Unsettling World Facts That Might Keep You Up At Night

She spent $50,000 in the middle of the night and told no one for over a decade. New Orleans, August 2005. Hurricane Katrina had just torn through the city, and the power grid was gone. At the Aquarium of the Americas, backup generators were running dry, temperatures were climbing, and oxygen was disappearing from the tanks. Staff fought around the clock to save what they could. Thousands of fish didn't make it. But 19 African penguins and two sea otters, Buck and Emma, survived the worst of it. The only way to save them now was to get them out fast. Monterey Bay Aquarium in California agreed to take them in, which meant one thing: a private charter flight out of Baton Rouge, in the dead of night, at a cost that ran into the tens of thousands of dollars. That's when an anonymous donor stepped in and covered half the bill $50,000 so the flight could happen. The aquarium staff who flew with the animals didn't find out who it was. Even the director who thanked the donor was told only that they wished to stay unnamed. The animals made it to California safely. All 21 of them. They stayed at Monterey Bay for nine months while Audubon rebuilt, then flew home to New Orleans in May 2006 aboard a donated FedEx cargo plane. The identity of the donor didn't come out until years later, after she passed away: it was Betty White. A staff member who'd cared for the birds for over two decades finally shared the story, saying she'd never wanted anyone to know. That was who she was. Decades of quiet checks to animal causes, no press releases, no photos just help, given because it was needed.