x6AJk TIL Michelle Trachtenberg was supposed to play Bella Swan in 'twilight’, but turned it down because she "had already done the vampire thing".
epWOD TIL that there is a Marble frieze of The Prophet Muhammad at the U.S. Supreme Court, dressed in long robes and carrying a sword.
VBVmk TIL that at age 8, Cynthia Ann Parker was captured by the Comanche tribe and adopted into their way of life, ultimately having 3 children with a chief, before being recaptured at age 33. She never fully reassimilated, having escaped once before being returned again.
X0PvD TIL In the wake of the Second World War, the US occupied Iceland until 2006
OG9AY TIL when Richard Hopper went to buy a lottery ticket, the clerk told him they had accidentally printed a ticket for a previous customer who didn't want it and asked him if he wanted to buy that ticket or a new one. He bought the already printed ticket and won $1 million from the Michigan Lottery.
69oRX TIL there has never been a US president who was an only child. On average, the US presidents have had (a little over) five siblings.
woAJo TIL Hawaii is the only state in the US to have a single school district and no local school boards.
R5wv7 TIL a NYC man won two $10 million prizes on two different scratch-offs that he purchased from the same shop just over a year apart.
W7evY TIL that, when considering the area of land only and excluding areas of water, Brazil is actually larger than the contiguous USA by a decent margin, and China is substantially larger than both by the same metric.
9wKKG TIL the Pirahã tribe has a very unique culture and language. Among other unusual features, they appear to be the world’s only people who lack words for numbers or any concept of counting. They also have no past tense, no way of describing colors, and no concept of the ancient past or distant future.
M744a TIL Starting as a joke, a Duke university researcher brought a portable scanning electron microscope into her home. Then the organization realized it wasn't a bad idea as she used it for virtual outreach activities
5Voop TIL that Yoko Ono, the wife of musician John Lennon, is the great-granddaughter of Yasuda Zenjiro, the founder of the Yasuda Zaibatsu that got dissolved at the end of World War II.