Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Jonathan Safran Foer (the author), much like Jonathan Safran Foer (the character), took a trip to the Ukraine in his 20s. Like the character, the author found nothing there. In this case, the truth is less strange than fiction. Foer decided to embellish his experience and write it as a novel so that it would actually be entertaining. (source)
Sammy Davis, Junior (the man the dog Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior is named after) actually was Jewish. He converted to Judaism in 1954 after a car accident that left him blind in one eye. Imagine that: Sammy Davis, Junior was half-blind and Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior is a seeing eye dog. (source)
There was an actual shtetl called Trochenbrod in Northwestern Ukraine. Jews fled there to avoid anti-Jewish Russian laws, and it, too, was destroyed when the Nazis murdered its residents in 1942. "The town had been created by anti-Semitism and it was destroyed by anti-Semitism." (source)