grb7y TIL of the NS Savannah, the first Nuclear powered Merchant ship that was used for a combination Cargo and Passenger Service as part of the Atoms for Peace Program. It has been a museum ship in Baltimore, MD since 2008
LQGB9 TIL Los Angeles Chargers RB Kimani Vidal is the great nephew of Atlanta Braves legend and HOF member Hank Aaron
b6bra TIL that the first time the red flag was flown as a symbol of workers’ rebellion in the UK was during the 1831 Merthyr Rising in Wales.
QN5Z6 TIL that Albert Mathieu-Favier’s 1802 Channel Tunnel plan had two levels, oil-lamp lighting, horse-drawn coaches, huge ventilation chimneys and a mid-sea island to swap horses. However 1880s generals warned France could “ride through on horseback and invade”, halting the project for over a century.
ANBwn TIL that because Virgil's Aeneid was left unfinished upon Virgil's death, the poet Maffeo Vegio wrote an unofficial Book 13 which sought to complete the story. This added book was published alongside the rest of the poem for several decades.
yV9rp TIL Jimmy Fallon Dropped Out Of College In 1995 To Pursue Comedy, Then Got His Degree In 2009 Using His TV & Film Work As College Credits
m1bWo TIL that in the 1990s, an “autobiography” appeared that was supposedly by Mao Anlong, a son of Mao Zedong. The book told how Anlong’s father forced him to go into hiding. That story was a hoax; the real Anlong died of dysentery when he was only three or four years old.
DQkXr TIL about Krampuslauf, the Alpine ‘Krampus Run’ where people dress as horned demons to scare spectators and celebrate St. Nicholas folklore
J1oNV TIL a study on heartbreak found that people struggling to move on reported thinking about their ex-partners for 85% of their waking hours, a level of obsessive fixation that researchers say parallels the cravings of drug addiction.
vPx8x TIL the brain consumes about 20% of the body's energy, and compromises 2% of body weight.
pYj6Q TIL that Mark Twain used fingerprints in his fiction decades before real police adopted them - joking about them in Life on the "Mississippi" (1883) and using them to solve a murder in "Pudd’nhead Wilson" (1894). Scotland Yard didn’t adopt fingerprinting until 1901 and the FBI later still.
GAaP4 TIL that China had an independent early cat–human relationship: neolithic farmers lived alongside local leopard cats long before the African-wildcat lineage that became our modern pets arrived via the Silk Road.