› added 11 years ago

196

TIL an electronics store chain that advertised stereos for “299 bananas” honored the television offer and lost over $10,000 when customers started showing up with loads of the fruit.

Read more snopes.com

via reddit.com

GYglN TIL Alexander Graham Bell wanted to abolish sign language and believed deaf people to be inferior. He proposed many ideas to breed a more “noble man” and reduce the intermarrying of the “dead and dumb”.
awEML TIL about Angus Barbieri who holds the longest fast record, he fasted for 382 days. He lived on tea, coffee, soda water and vitamins. He lost 276 pounds (125 kg).
raBx TIL A guy in Arizona wrote his address on $1 bills pleading they be sent back to him & gets them back from all over the world, up to $94/month.
E10gP TIL that the first recorded mention of altitude sickness was in 37 BCE, when a Chinese official noted that a trade route to Afghanistan passed a mountain that caused sickness as travelers ascended it - in the report, this place was named “Big Headache Mountain”.
rLyW TIL Apollo 13 was filmed using zero-g training planes to simulate weightlessness instead of wires and CGI