› added 6 years ago

316

TIL that the Syndey Opera House is considered one of the worst project managerment failures of our time. It was 10 years late, 14 times over budget, the architect never saw it completed and the project manager never worked on another project in his career (he became a lecturer at Hawaii Uni)

yVGjv TIL that sparkling water was invented by Joseph Priestly, who also discovered oxygen; he speculated that CO₂ might treat gastrointestinal infection (taken rectally) and even cancer
JyYQ TIL in 1992 a South Carolina man tied his wife’s hands and feet with rope, covered her mouth and eyes with duct tape, turned on a video camera, and raped her. At his trial, the man testified, “No, I didn’t rape my wife. How can you rape your own wife?” The jury took less than an hour to acquit him
W7EPN TIL Pythagoras thought beans contained a human soul and fought against their consumption or destruction. One account of his death claims that he would not enter a bean field to escape pursuers, so they killed him.
oR7YW TIL when Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, who had a famously deep voice, quit smoking cigarettes at 77-years-old in 2012, he thought that his vocal range would become higher and improve. Instead, his voice became even lower.
mQwv TIL that a cow named Cincinnati Freedom evaded police officers for 11 days after jumping a six-foot fence to escape a slaughterhouse; after finally being caught, and she was given the “key to the city” by Cincinnati’s mayor and allowed to live out her days in a NY sanctuary