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Items tagged with: TIL


TIL Mexican actress Silvia Pinal smuggled the last remaining copy of the film Virdiana out of Spain after the Vatican ordered all other copies destroyed

latintimes.com/how-silvia-pina…
#til #todayilearned
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#TIL I learned that German cities used to have a "Bettelvogt" or "Armenvogt" - a minor official whose job was it to "control the behavior" of beggars and other poor people.

They were explicitly tasked to _control_ beggars, and not help them in any way. Which just goes to show that shitty behavior towards poor people by the authorities was well-established long before the advent of #LateStageCapitalism .

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenvog…


TIL Known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, in 1930 the United States enacted heavy tariffs that ultimately failed to achieve their intended outcome. Some economists attributed that action as leading to the Great Depression.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL that Owls don’t have Eye “Balls” they have Eye “Tubes”. This is why they have to turn their whole heads instead of just their eyes.

mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


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TIL that in 1976, 3 men kidnapped a bus full of schoolchildren with the goal of ransoming them back for 5 million dollars. They tried to place the ransom call, but the line was busy, and they ended up falling asleep. By the time they woke up, the children had freed themselves and made it to safety.

wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Chowch…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL in 1982 a BA 747 lost all four engines and had its windscreen sandblasted after flying through an Indonesian volcanic eruption. The pilot landed, at night and with limited visuals, and commented afterwards that it was "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL that "floss" is actually an acronym standing for "Frictional Ligation Of Subgingival Spaces"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_f…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL that in 2010, a crocodile that was being smuggled aboard an airplane got loose. When passengers scrambled to the front of the plane, it shifted the plane's center of gravity, causing them to crash. There was only one survivor.

wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Filair…
#til #todayilearned
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TIL that the actual landmass the state of Rhode Island is named after is more commonly known as Aquidneck Island.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquidnec…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


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#TIL: There is a community run public transport routing service #Transitious.

transitous.org/


TIL that Eratosthenes paid a guy to walk 800 kilometers to a tower to measure the length of it’s shadow & that’s how we found out the earth was round.

abc.net.au/news/2021-09-05/era…
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reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL Philadelphia Cream Cheese is produced in New York, and always has been since it was invented by William Lawrence in 1872. He named his company Philadelphia to market off of the city's reputation for high quality dairy products.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadel…
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TIL A boy dying of an incurable illness wanted to meet Luke Skywalker (in character). His mental state devolved to the point where he did not realise Luke was fictional. Mark Hamill agreed to dress up in character and meet the boy. He spent hours answering questions.

bestlifeonline.com/this-mark-h…
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reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL that a twitch streamer and youtuber by the name of Masayoshi decided to test something out on his livestream a year ago telling people in chat to type “im 12” and, long story short over 100 twitch accounts were perma banned for “being underage” thanks to twitch’s bots thinking that were underage

youtube.com/watch?v=eYf60wpdJA…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


hmmm, must have been because of the "new Math." But wow.
Post from @todayilearned, TIL that in the 1980s, A&W launched their third-pounder burger to compete with the quarter-pounder. Confused about low sales, they conducted a study and found that around half the participants thought a third was smaller than a quarter. The burger was rebranded to the "papa burger."

https://culinarylore.com/food-history:aw-1-3-pound-burger-failure-fact-check-are-americans-really…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com… Sunday, July 14, 2024 2:6:3. Public.


TIL that if you drive at 45 mph on a specific stretch of Route 66 in New Mexico, the road's rumble strips will play 'America the Beautiful.'

popularmechanics.com/technolog…
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reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL legend has it that brownies were created accidentally by a forgetful baker who forgot to add baking powder to a chocolate cake batter

cutecakes.com/the-history-of-b…
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reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL: This year Arizona signed a bill making Pluto the official state planet. Arizona legislators said Pluto was downgraded due to jealous Europeans. Arizona discovered it whereas all prior planets were discovered by Europeans. The bill was a bipartisan effort.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/06/1243230463/pluto-was-discovered-at-an-arizona-observatory-it-might-be-named-the-…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL Judith Love Cohen was American aerospace engineer who helped create the Abort-Guidance System that rescued the Apollo 13 astronauts. When she went into labor, she took a printout of her problem to the hospital. She called her boss and said she finished it before giving birth to actor Jack Black.

kottke.org/19/05/meet-aerospac…
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reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL theft is so rare in Japan that people often use wallets, purses, laptops or phones to save their seats in cafes and public places, leaving them unattended while they go buy food or go to the bathroom.

soranews24.com/2017/09/26/the-…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL in the audio universe, AM/FM radio is still by far the top medium in the US with a monthly reach of 91% of adults (18+). Followed by YouTube Music with 29% and Spotify with 25%.

radioinsight.com/wp-content/up…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL that the reason that Mr. Rogers told viewer that he was feeding his fish as he was doing so was because a five-year-old fan who is blind was concerned that he wasn't, so he wanted to put her mind at ease.

misterrogers.org/articles/the-…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


#TIL that in 1929, JM Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, gifted his work's copyright to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

"Through this gift, Peter Pan’s magic made an unprecedented leap from the realm of fiction into reality and the hospital began to receive royalties every time a production of the play was on, as well as from the sale of Peter Pan books and other products."

gosh.org/about-us/peter-pan/hi…

#history #literature #books #bookstodon #PeterPan #philanthropy


TIL that in 1990, on flight BA 5390, a poorly installed windshield blew off, partially sucking the captain out of the plane. The crew managed to hold onto him until they landed, and amazingly, he survived.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_…
#til #todayilearned
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TIL Jacques Lusseyran went blind at age 7. At age 14, alarmed by the Nazi's rise to power, he learned German to understand Hitlers speeches. At age 17 he was leader in the French resistance, and was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. He was among the 990 out of 2000 French prisoners to survive.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL that Mike Tyson went bankrupt in 2003. Despite having earned $400 million from boxing, examples of reckless spending included $6.3 million on luxury cars and $580K on his 30th birthday party. He has improved his financial situation and now receives $900K/month from his cannabis company, however.

https://www.unilad.com/celebrity/how-mike-tyson-went-bankrupt-and-rebu…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL that in 1996, Bindu Jua, a female gorilla in Brookfield zoo cradled a 3 year old child, who fell into her enclosure and broke his arm, with much care until he received medical attention

abcnews.go.com/amp/US/gorilla-…
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reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL, Jumbo the elephant was not named such because of his size. Instead, Jumbo the word, meaning exceptionally large, was only introduced into the english language because of Jumbo the elephant. He was so big and so well known that his name became synonymous with size.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumbo
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL: a former Italian porn star, Carlo Massi, quit porn to do research in applied mathematics, got his PhD, taught real analysis, became a professor, and then got sacked for being a former porn star. He sued and won against the university.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Ma…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL that on Valentine's Day, a group of embittered singles in Shanghai bought up all the odd-numbered seats in the theater, forcing couples to sit apart.

theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL about Duck Shit oolong which the discoverer of, named it so that he could keep all the leaves to himself.

curioustea.com/tea/oolong-tea/…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


So apparently the term "patch" in software development comes from punched paper tape.

"Small corrections to the programmed sequence could be done by patching over portions of the paper tape and re-punching the holes in that section."

chsi.harvard.edu/harvard-ibm-m…

#til #computers #development #language #history


#TIL: This actor from episode Citizen Joe of #StarGate SG-1 TV series is the english dubbing artist of Homer #Simpson, grandpa Simpson, Krusty the clown or Barney Gumble.


TIL about Yan Tan Tethera, a “language” used traditionally for sheep counting in the British Isles, derived from now extinct languages such as Cumbrian

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_tan_…
#til #todayilearned
reddit.com/r/todayilearned/com…


TIL the photo of Salvador Dalí jumping and painting while water and live cats fly through the air took 5 hours and 26 tries because they couldn't get the timing right. The "floating" objects hung from wires or were held up off-camera. Dalí’s canvas frame was empty in the pic; he painted it in later.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dal%C3%A…
#til #todayilearned
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/18ucg0b/til_the_photo_of_salvador_dalí_jumping_and/