P1VXZ TIL a man with Alzheimer's forgot he was married — and then fell in love with his wife all over again. He proposed again, and they had a second wedding...
epv5g TIL Eleanor Roosevelt wrote an extremely popular newspaper column 6 days-a-week for 25 years which was part diary, part moral support for the disadvantaged, and part attacks on complacent Democrats.
VBrNG TIL the only Indian POW held in Colditz Castle during WWII, Birendra Nath Mazumdar, was shunned by his fellow inmates. To improve his odds of escaping, he staged a hunger strike to get transferred to an all-Indian camp. It worked & he escaped from the new camp & walked 900km to Switzerland & freedom
X0YBX TIL about "John Rainwater", a fake graduate math student in the 1950s created as a prank due to an extra student registration form. The name later became a pseudonym for publishers in functional analysis, even having their own result called "Rainwater's theorem"
OGXOL TIL between 1999 and 2015, 736 UK Post Office workers were wrongly convicted for stealing money due to faulty accounting software. Workers were forced to pay back nonexistent losses with their own money and some were even sent to jail for a crime they did not commit.
69rlY TIL Einstein’s famous tongue-out photo was taken on his 72nd birthday, after a long day of smiling for photographers, when he was tired of posing, so he stuck out his tongue instead.
wogDJ TIL that the final payment on German debts in regards to World War One reparations was made on October 3rd, 2010.
R5Pew TIL the first Hollywood film to feature a majority Asian cast was Flower Drum Song (1961). The second film to do so was The Joy Luck Club (1993). The third film to do so was Crazy Rich Asians (2018).
W7BrX TIL Ben Affleck’s habit of ad-libbing annoyed Kevin Smith so much during Chasing Amy that Smith told him to write his own script. Affleck ending up co-writing Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon and won an Oscar.
9wEBr TIL the largest sporting disaster in history was in Ancient Rome, where 50,000 people died after an amphitheatre collapsed in 27 CE
nWgD9 TIL in 1994 Jim Carrey became first actor to headline three number one movies at the box office in the same year with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber
4klPR TIL there are over 8,330 different vehicle license plate choices in the US, with Maryland leading the most options at 989 plates.