› added 12 years ago

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TIL That an electrical bug zapper can spread a mist containing insect parts up to 7ft.

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Zp5lp TIL that the Champs-Élysées is not just a "busy street", but a name derived from the Greek mythological concept of the Elysian Fields; Champs= fields + Élysées=Elysian (Palace), so it is literally just the farm out the back of the Elysian Palace and the road came later.
jNB7Q TIL A group of fans made an award winning web series completing the 5 year mission of the Enterprise in the original Star Trek series. So good, Gene Roddenberry's son considers it to be canon.
e0PE6 TIL that in 1962, elephant bones were discovered under the Vatican. Decades later, it was discovered that they were the bones of Pope Leo X's pet elephant Hanno, who died in 1516 after doctors (in an attempt to treat constipation) inserted a gold enema up its rectum.
4Q9N TIL Stalin’s hated his oldest son,Yakov, so much that when he tried and failed to commit suicide by gun Stalin joked “He can’t even shoot straight.” Yakov later died in a German concentration camp, possibly after disobeying a guard. Stalin felt this was an honorable death.
8abbP TIL The Nazis used triangular badges or patches to identify prisoners in the concentration camps. Different colored patches represented different groups. In Mauthausen Concentration Camp the Jews wore red and yellow triangles forming a six pointed star.