› added 9 months ago

62

TIL when Pope Francis announced his visit to Belgium in 2023, residents of Father Damien's birth town were upset they weren't included in his visit because 30 years prior, Pope John-Paul II promised to visit them but cancelled last minute after he broke his femur by slipping in the papal bathtub.

Read more vrt.be

via reddit.com

ngOP TIL that in 1969 Mick Jagger wrote to artist M.C. Escher asking him to provide an image for a Rolling Stones album cover. Escher turned him down. He’d never heard of the Stones. He’d never heard of Jagger and he objected to Jagger addressing him by his first name.
17vr TIL that Tolkien himself considered Sam (Samwise Gamgee) the chief hero of “Lord of the Rings”.
gM5BW TIL that square academic caps are called mortarboards, because it looks similar to the mortarboard used by brickmasons to hold mortar
P14YE TIL that male peacocks make fake mating sounds to make him seem more popular so females will mate with him.
7Vrx TIL during WW2, trained elephants at a zoo in Tokyo were starved to death. Throughout the ordeal, they repeatedly performed their tricks in fruitless attempts to get fed.