› added 2 years ago

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TIL the historian meridian marker In Greenwich is off by about 100 meters because they looked "straight up" at stars, but to find "straight up" you use a weight to find "straight down", and the uneven mass of the Earth means that it doesn't point to the exact center of the Earth

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BJde TIL After hearing that Guinness Book of World Records planned to give him the world record for having filed the highest number of lawsuit, Jonathan Lee Riches (a federal prisoner) did what he does best – he sued them.
XEgkk TIL that the British band "The Tremeloes" where signed to Decca Records instead of the "The Beatles"
rB9W TIL that since 1912, many impractical ideas have been suggested to recover the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, including filling the wreck with ping-pong balls, injecting her with 180,000 tons of Vaseline, or using liquid nitrogen to turn her into a giant iceberg that would float back to the surface.
byja TIL when the face of Italian fashion model Fabio, which has graced the cover of hundreds of romance novels, got struck by a goose on a roller coaster, he refused to sue, saying that he was not interested in profiting from the accident, but only wanted the park to install proper safety measures.
DQmj TIL that there is an “Awesome Foundation” that awards $1000 grants every month for “crazy brilliant” ideas and wants to “advance awesomeness in the universe.”