› added 13 years ago

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TIL that traditional Japanese units of time were of unequal length, to accommodate the variation in daylight as the seasons changed. They also created mechanical clocks that varied in the same way.

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GY6bN TIL: The inventor of the Lava Light, an accountant, originally didn't envision his product associating with groovy psychedelic hippie culture. An ad for them in the straight-laced American Bar Association Journal pitched an "executive" desk version mounted on a walnut base beside a ballpoint pen.
mxXyY TIL "paint the town red" refers a night of drunken vandalism by the Maquess of Waterford. In 1837, he and a group of fox-hunting friends arrived in the English town of Melton Mowbray, where they painted several doors, a sign, a tollgate, the tollkeeper, and sevearl police officers with red paint.
e7ag TIL 666 is not the number of the beast, it’s 616 and was changed in later versions of the bible to mirror the number of Jesus, 888
7PgX TIL Ethiopian runner Haile Gebrselassie, who won 2 Olympic Golds and 4 world titles in 10000 meters, runs with a crooked left arm because he developed the habit as a child when he used to run 10 kilometers to school every day whilst holding his books
oRnOR TIL in 1997, a civilian pilot witnessed and reported one of the most widely sighted UFO appearances, the Phoenix Lights. That pilot was actor Kurt Russell, who only learned of the significance of the lights years later when he saw it mentioned on a TV show his wife was watching.