› added 1 year ago

42

TIL two families escaped East Germany in a home made hot air balloon

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

OG6YX TIL Gordon Lightfoot was inspired to write "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" when he saw the name misspelled as "Edmond" in Newsweek magazine. He felt the misspelling dishonored the memory of the 29 men who died when the freighter sank in Lake Superior during a storm on November 10, 1975.
160y4 TIL the 1987 movie Million Dollar Mystery was promoted with a real contest in which $1 million were hidden in an undisclosed location that the winner would correctly identify. 14-year-old Alesia Lenae Jones won the contest.
dLpQ TIL on June 29, 1995, a department store in Seoul, Korea collapsed, killing 500 people. During construction, the owner insisted on adding an unauthorized 6th floor with a swimming pool. When his engineers protested, they were fired.
OoD8X TIL: of Wilmer McLean. After the battle of bull run happened on his farm in Manassas, he moved his family to Appomattox courthouse. 3 years later, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant there. He purportedly said ""The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor."
yKQ8 TIL that a company sells $425 24k gold pills just so people can say they literally poop gold