› added 2 years ago

61

TIL the small city of Coalinga, California got its name due to steam trains. The town used to be known as "Coaling Station A," where trains would stop to pick up coal. Eventually the name became shortened to "Coaling A" and then "Coalinga."

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

d8Zk7 TIL Max Mosley, former head of the FIA, once sued a tabloid for writing "F1 Boss has Sick Nazi Orgy with Five Hookers" claiming that while he did engage in a BDSM orgy set in a German prison, the orgy was not Nazi-themed. He won.
k5ed TIL that British sniper Matt Hughes managed to kill an enemy with a half-mile sniper shot which curved 56 feet(17 meters) in the air before hitting the target.
d8Vn8 TIL that in 2008 the King of Norway knighted a penguin called Nils Olav III that lives at Edinburgh Zoo. The King described him as a penguin "in every way qualified to receive the honour and dignity of knighthood". He is a Brigadier and Colonel-in-Chief in the Norwegian army.
Lkr9p TIL that music can be perceived in a faster or slower tempo - this is due to being in a physiological flow state, music might seem slower when focussed and faster when it's in the background
Wkny4 TIL that the CIA paid Vietnam War spies by ordering them items from the Sears catalog because the spies operated in areas that had a barter economy and didn't rely on cash