› added 3 years ago

229

TIL about the the transmitter for WLW radio outside Cincinnati, until the output was reduced in 1939 from 500,000 watts, would cause lights to not turn off until WLW engineers rewired houses, a nearby hotel sign never went dark and farmers reported hearing WLW through their barbed-wire fences.

j6jXp TIL that Australia’s Mount Wingen has been burning for 6,000 years. A lightning strike or brush fire ignited a coal seam there around 4000 B.C., and it’s been smoldering ever since.
mxgZx TIL about a place called Elan School which promised to "fix" your teenager for $40k a year. Turns out they were forced to live in squalor, physically fight, and psychologically abuse each other to earn basic privileges like food and sleep.
69de7 TIL Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes (Trap streets) in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence.
Bgewy TIL Isabel Godin des Odonais (1728–1792) was separated from her husband in South America for over 20 years due to colonial politics. She was the only survivor of a 42-person, 3,000-mile expedition through the Amazon Basin to rejoin him. They reunited in 1770 and later returned to France.
oRpkY TIL that US Navy sailors in World War II drank torpedo juice, a blend of 180-proof grain alcohol fuel from a torpedo and pineapple juice. Despite the Navy's attempts to render the alcohol undrinkable, sailors still found ways around this to varying degrees of effectiveness.