› added 10 years ago

85

TIL that Anne Hathaway wanted to be a nun when she was young. However, she lost respect for the Catholic church at age fifteen when “I realized my older brother was gay, and I couldn’t support a religion that didn’t support my brother.”

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

BrGmd TIL that while evaluating security at a Fortune 5 company, a penetration tester was suspicious that the small-town restaurant across the street served black duck eggs, a rare Chinese delicacy. The restaurant was reported to the FBI and was revealed to be a front for a Chinese espionage operation.
aQj0 TIL that a man named Edward Leedskalnin, with a 4th grade level of education, built a 1000 ton castle single handed for the love of his life over the course of 28 years only for her to leave him the day before the wedding.
VBRbZ TIL of Didymus Chalcenterus (literally Didymus Bronze-Guts) the most prolific known writer of antiquity who wrote between 3500 and 4000 treatises. He became known as "Book-Forgetter" since he was unable to remember what he had written previously and often contradicted himself.
9Ybl7 TIL that negative probability exist and were discovered in 1942. Although highly criticized at first, they are now the bases of quantum mechanics and risk neutral probabilities in finance.
neRpo TIL in the middle ages mainly blind people were hired as treadwheel operators on construction sites, as they would not be scared from the sheer drop sight below them. It is also considered one of the worst jobs in history, as the wheels often broke.