Postagens

Mostrando postagens de julho, 2021

TIL that, a year before the end of WW I, Germany lodged an official complaint with the United States over the issuing of Winchester M97 "Trench Broom" shotgun to its' troops. So much so that the German military issued a kill order towards any troops carrying either shotguns or shotgun ammunition.

TIL a photographer had her computer stolen with all her images on it. When she got the laptop back, the thief had erased everything. Recovery software got severely distorted images back, which she turned into an art exhibit

TIL: the US Gov't made a deal with the Italian Mafia to ensure that no German or Italian saboteurs snuck in through the New York port/docks by providing information to the US Navy. They also guaranteed no dockworkers would strike, therefore ensuring a constant line of supplies leaving to the front.

TIL that Aztec language, the name for gold is teocuitlatl, which meant poop of the gods.

Til there is a banana variety that is blue in color and has the taste and texture of vanilla icecream

TIL that Luxembourg participated in the Korean War. They sent their entire army of 44 soldiers to assist South Korea in 1951, with 2 deaths and 17 injured in the conflict by the end

TIL that during the Civil Rights Movement, Louis Armstrong "blew his top" in an interview about the segregationist governor of Arkansas, referring to him as a "motherfucker" and singing an F-bomb-laced rendition of the national anthem.

TIL the most lopsided officially recorded soccer score in history was 149-0. The losing team intentionally scored 149 own goals to protest refereeing from previous games.....

TIL that heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali and sportscaster Howard Cosell’s relationship extended well beyond great interviews. Cosell was among the first to call him by his adopted name, and vehemently supported Ali’s refusal to serve via the draft.

TIL Early European modern humans had dark skin, as genes for light skin did not evolve until 30000 years ago, and white skin did not become prevalent in Europe until the Bronze Age.

TIL The Apollo 15 mission left behind a small aluminum statuette called Fallen Astronaut, along with a plaque bearing the names of 14 known American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in the furtherance of space exploration.

TIL that the last conviction under the Witchcraft Act 1735 was in 1944. Medium Helen Duncan had revealed the sinking of HMS Barham during a seance, and the government was concerned she would leak information about D-Day the same way.

TIL French and Italian share 89% lexical similarity, this means a native Italian without any knowledge of French can understand 89% of the words they read in French and vice versa.

TIL astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who as a student discovered pulsars, credits her discovery to impostor syndrome and a fear of being kicked out of college; “I’m a bit of a fighter, so I decided until they threw me out I would work my very hardest". That discovery earned the 1974 Nobel Prize.

TIL The phrase 'What Hath God Wrought' was the final message radioed to commercial ships via Morse Code when the system was discontinued in 1999. It was also the first official message sent by inventor Samuel Morse when he demonstrated the system for Congress in 1844.

TIL volunteer Miss Frank E. Buttolph was responsible for saving and donating 25,000 menus spanning 1850s thru the early 1900s to the New York public library. The collection provides a slice of life historical perspective to ordinary people's lives

TIL that Sherpa is not an occupation or job title but rather the name of a Tibetan ethnic group

TIL: Children who have sensory processing issues and take part in “heavy work” activities (proprioceptive input) such as pushing, lifting, or carrying heavy objects, experience an increased ability to focus, improved motor skills, and decreased behavioral defensiveness.

TIL An astronomer travelled to India in 1760 to observed the transit of Venus. His ship blew, and he missed the date. He stayed in India for 8 years to try again, but the sky was too cloudy. When he returned home, he had been declared dead, his wife remarried, his estate plundered, and his job lost

TIL that the church excluded and deemed the Infancy Gospel of Thomas heretical. In the book, Jesus kills 2 children who do wrong to him and blinds their parents. He does however later reverse his actions.

TIL Michael Godwin, convicted murderer, was initially given a death sentence by electrocution before being reduced to life imprisonment. Godwin died from electrocution when he bit into wires while attempting to fix a broken television set at the same time sitting on a metal toilet in his prison cell

TIL: Danielle Steele, the best-selling author alive, puts out 6-7 bestsellers a year, has 9 kids and sleeps only 4 hours a day

TIL it is not recommended to flush a scorpion down a toilet, as scorpions can survive being under the water hence they may come back out that same toilet or crawl up the drains and into your home

TIL Anyone can apply to use the Hubble Space Telescope. The application process is open to worldwide competition without restrictions on nationality or academic affiliation.

TIL in the 50s and 60s both American and Soviet films were banned in Yugoslavia, so instead they imported films from Mexico, who were going through their cinematic golden age. This created a Mexican craze in Yugoslavia where Yugoslav singers would dress like mariachis, sing songs in a Mexican style

TIL I learned that some cars have a coating on their radiator that converts ground level ozone (a smog contributor) into harmless oxygen. The large amount of air passes through the radiator. Having this coating helps cars meet US air regulations.

TIL that over his 78 year career (from age 13 to 91) Pablo Picasso produced about 147,800 pieces of art, consisting of 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, 300 sculptures and ceramics and 34,000 illustrations.

TIL because of decreasing global fertility rates, "researchers expect the number of people on the planet to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064, before falling down to 8.8 billion by the end of the century."

TIL that in California starting in 1946, there is a program that has incarcerated people fight the California wildfires, serving their sentences in Fire Camps in the forest that are high risk for fires and make up 30% of the fire crews that respond to the wildfires.

TIL that in 1996 a physicist submitted a paper full of word salad and gibberish to a postmodernist journal and it actually passed peer review and was published. This is known as the Sokal Affair.

TIL that the USS Constitution, a wooden hulled, three masted ship built in 1797. Is currently the only commissioned US Navy ship to sink an enemy ship.

TIL that there is a restaurant in Tokyo called “The Restaurant of Order Mistakes” that hires waiters with dementia and Alzheimer’s. They may or may not get your order right.

TIL that Tom Hanks’ brother Jim Hanks not only acted a double in Forrest Gump for various scenes, but also provides the voice of “Woody” in a number of Toy Story video games, toys, and shorts.

TIL Kanye West has interrupted an award presentation, by going on stage, THREE separate times. Once in 2006 for losing MTV's Best Music Video Award, in 2009 with the infamous Taylor Swift interruption to promote Beyonce, and lastly in 2015, during Beck's Grammy award acceptance, again for Beyonce.

TIL Costco loses $40m a year on rotisserie chickens. A clear loss leader, they are 50% bigger than ones from other stores, and $1-$2 cheaper because it's '...how much a chicken should cost'. They sell over 60m of them a year.

TIL Australia is not the world's biggest island, despite being 5 million square-km bigger than Greenland. Australia sits on its own tectonic plate, thus being a continent and not an island, while Greenland sits on the same tectonic plate as North America.

TIL In the 1930's a selling point for TP started by Northern Tissue company was that their toilet paper was "splinter free"

TIL of Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist who kept a vast collection of handwritten notes on top secret files. When he defected to British Intelligence in 1992, he brought six trunks of notes with him that exposed most KGB activities in the West during the Cold War

TIL Soviet gymnast Elena Mukhina, widely touted as the next great gymnastics star until 1979. Her coach rushed her recovery from an injury and pressured her to perform a dangerous move (the Thomas salto), which caused her to break her neck, leaving her a lifelong quadriplegic. She died at 46 in 2006

TIL Despite having a heart condition and arthritis that forced him to use a cane, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. led the first wave of landings at Utah Beach on D-Day, becoming the only general to land with his soldiers that day.

TIL In 1974, the North Korean government ordered 1000 Volvo 144 cars as well as other manufacturing equipment from Sweden but never actually payed for any of it. They currently owe about $320000000 in debt to Sweden.

TIL Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire Killed 11% of the World's Population in the 13th Century

TIL China, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam account for nearly half of all plastic waste that flows from land into the ocean. North America, the largest consumer of plastic goods, only accounts for 5%

TIL in 1991 actress Charisma Carpenter and friends were attacked in San Diego by former police officer and serial rapist Henry Hubbard Jr. After escaping with their lives and Hubbard Jr.'s subsequent arrest, Carpenter provided key evidence that helped secure Hubbard Jr.'s 56-year conviction.

TIL doctors carried out an emergency C-Section on a dying car crash victim only to discover she was not pregnant. Her "protruding stomach" was due to previous surgery to treat spinal bifida

TIL that Simpsons episode where Krustyburger nearly goes bankrupt from giving out free burgers when USA won gold medals is based on fact, and this actually happened with McDonald's when the USSR boycotted the 1984 games

TIL During the summer of 1988, Canadian marathon swimmer Vicki Keith swam across all 5 Great Lakes to raise money for charity, covering a total of 253 kilometres (157 miles) in 160 hours and 22 minutes over a two month period.

TIL about Albert Wolff, a French Jewish fencer who refused to participate in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He fought against the Nazis in the French army, escaped a Jewish war camp, and fought against them in the US army.

TIL that Charlie Chaplin's first speaking role was the last 5 minutes of The Great Dictator, a parody film about Hitler. It was banned in Germany and its supporting countries during WWll.

TIL A missing DJ’s body was found nearly mummified within the walls of a bar soon after Winnipeg instituted a no smoking in bars law. Before the ban, the smell of cigarette smoke covered up the smell of his decomposing body.