› added 12 years ago

119

TIL that Asia Carrera (former porn star) performed on the piano at Carnegie Hall twice before the age of 15, and later won a full academic scholarship to Rutgers University. However, at age 17 she ran away from home because she felt her parents put too much pressure on her to succeed academically.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

xVZMb TIL 'Bless you' as a response to sneezing comes from the days of the plague when a sneeze was often the first sign of imminent death.
8eKQL TIL that Bernie Madoff was treated as a hero in prison. The swindler wrote in a letter to family, "I am quite the celebrity, and am treated like a Mafia don. I can't walk anywhere without someone shouting their greetings and encouragement, to keep my spirit up".
xV4Yb TIL: Despite common misconception Ben Franklin did not propose Daylight Saving Time. Modern DST was first proposed to the Wellington Philosophical Society NZ in 1895 & first enacted in Port Arthur Canada in 1905
p85e4 TIL Connaught Place, an example of Georgian architecture, was made to serve the elite living in Delhi and was inspired by the Royal Crescent in Bath. It also boasts of India’s first underground and air-conditioned market, Palika Bazaar
xVbJb TIL that in 1978, a year after smallpox was eradicated worldwide, the virus escaped from the lab of professor Henry Bedson. It infected two last patients, including the last person to ever die of smallpox. Bedson, who had been working to rid the world of smallpox, killed himself the next day.