› added 11 years ago

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TIL when Columbus first sailed to America his ship’s captain (Rodrigo de Triana) spotted land first but Columbus later claimed he had already seen it a few hours earlier, thereby claiming for himself the lifetime pension that had been promised by King Ferdinand to the first person to sight land.

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bbDQ TIL Czechoslovak runner Emil Zátopek decided to compete in the marathon in the 1952 Olympics, despite never having run that distance in his life. Zátopek asked fellow runner Jim Peters, who he was racing alongside, if the pace was fast enough. When Peters said “no”, Zátopek sped up and won the race
RjP6 TIL of the assassin Balthasar Gérard and his brutal execution, involving having his right hand burned off with a red-hot iron, his flesh torn from his bones with pincers, quartered and disemboweled alive, his heart torn from his chest and flung into his face, and finally his head chopped off.
yGmX TIL they didn’t know how strong the blast of the first prototype of the atomic bomb before detonating it in the New Mexico desert. They even had pre-prepared press releases for every event from ‘loud noise’ to 'among the dead were’.
nWpQ9 TIL about Saparmurat Niyazov, ex-dictator of Turkmenistan. He exiled dogs from the capital, banned wearing makeup on TV or founded holiday for melons. Lipsyncing? Also banned.
Wk6aB TIL that the actor who played Luca Brasi in the Godfather was actually a member of the Colombo crime family sent to monitor the set. Coppola cast him, but due to his nerves, he kept making mistakes and repeating his lines to himself. This was then incorporated into the film as a character trait.