OG9V4 TIL that there is a negative form of the halo effect, called The Horn Effect , which allows one disliked trait or aspect of a person or product to negatively influence globally. For those seen in a negative light, anything they do that is negative is exemplified, while the positive are not seen.
69oe8 TIL about 70,000 years ago Scholz's Star passed through the Oort Cloud affecting the orbits of the planets in our solar system.
woAYP TIL that Night of the Living Dead (1968) is responsible for the modern conception of zombies as unhinged flesh-eaters. Prior to the movie, "zombies" were typically portrayed as living people enslaved by priests. Interestingly however, the word "zombie" is never mentioned once in the entire film.
R5wM4 TIL: Magnus Scheving (actor of Sportacus in Lazy Town) became national champion in aerobics based on a bet in his twenties. Scheving chose snooker for Fjölnir, and Fjölnir chose aerobics. Eventually, Scheving became a national champion in aerobics, and Fjölnir became a national champion in snooker"
W7eEN TIL about Major Money, who was born in Montreal weeks before Canada, moved with his family to England as an infant, fought in the Boer War and WW I, and returned to Canada to operate a hotel on Vancouver Island, where he hosted, among others, Bob Hope, Errol Flynn and Shirley Temple.
nW87o TIL that Fallout began life as an official adaptation of the GURPS table-top RPG system. They fell out over the amount of violence in the game, and GURPS' publisher withdrew the license, but it remained a huge influence on the skill system.
4koEg TIL that in 1986, a French woman invested several months of her time to gain the necessary qualifications to operate a helicopter. She then proceeded to rent one, fly it over a prison, and successfully extract her husband, a convicted bank robber, from the prison's roof.
9wKkM TIL Thomas Cromwell led the persecution of Anne Boleyn based on a prophecy of "secret treason" against Henry VIII by "children of unbelief." Anne opposed Cromwell's harder line on the church but when a priest close to her attacked Cromwell in a sermon Cromwell became convinced the prophecy was true.
x6Ae5 TIL That Amelia Earhart had a copilot when she disappeared, his name was Fred Noonan.
epWB6 TIL that until 1976, the US Army shared responsibility with the Marines for transporting the President by helicopter. When crewed by their personnel, the aircraft was known as "Army One".
VBVk0 TIL that behind Pluto there is a dwarf planet that is 27% bigger than Pluto, and we didn't know about it until 2005
X0POk TIL from 1971 to the 2000s, the MIT Blackjack Team, a team of students and alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and other colleges, beat casinos at blackjack worldwide through card counting and other methods