› added 11 years ago

72

TIL that in ancient Sparta, men were only given the honour of a gravestone if they died in battle, and women were only given it if they died in childbirth.

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VBWJ8 TIL In 1963, The Alweg Monorail Company offered to build a 43-mile monorail system for Los Angeles County free of charge, recouping construction costs from passenger fares. The County Board of Supervisors declined the offer under pressure from Standard Oil.
dXXK TIL Disney hired kodak to make the pavement in their parks a certain hue of pink, to make their grass look greener (by wearing out the red receptors in your eyes).
E1djV TIL Goya's most well known painting, Saturn Devouring his Son, was not described or named at all to the public by the artist himself. The name was given later on due to it resembling the mythological event. For all we know, it could not be Saturn at all, but just someone eating another person.
b9BGj TIL in 1932, Winston Churchill went to a hotel in Munich two days in a row to have tea with Adolf Hitler. Hitler stood him up both times
m1PjR TIL Electron microscopes produce only black and white images. Colour doesn’t exist at that scale, because the things it images are smaller than the wavelength of visible light but false colour as often used