› added 12 years ago

149

TIL Anton-Babinski syndrome is a rare condition in which a blind person doesn’t realize that they are blind.

Read more wikipedia.org

via bit.ly

X04RD TIL that the famous James Bond theme (first heard in 1962 in Dr. No) was source of a long running dispute between John Barry and Monty Norman. Norman had originally written a song for a musical adaptation of V. S. Naipaul's novel A House for Mr Biswas which was the inspiration.
0v7j TIL Beethoven won a sight reading piano competition by turning his sheet music upside down, playing it, then improvising on one of its themes for thirty minutes. His opponent, Daniel Steibelt, never returned to challenge him again.
O9bX TIL that in 1962 the US military suggested committing acts of terrorism on US soil to create popular support for a war against Cuba. A horrified President Kennedy personally fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the incident.
9YVLQ TIL when the territory of Wyoming applied to join the US, congress told them they'd have to stop letting women vote. Their response was "We will remain out of the Union one hundred years rather than come in without the women”. In 1890 they joined as the first and only state to allow women to vote.
mxydO TIL: Around 120 million years ago there still existed snakes which had not yet fully lost their limbs as all modern snakes have. The species is known as Tetrapodophis and had 4 tiny limbs on its otherwise snake-like body.