› added 6 years ago

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TIL that 7-year-old Julie Ann Crumpling was sent to jail in 1870 for ‘stealing’ a pram to play dollies. She was Oxford Jail’s youngest prisoner, sentenced to hard labour for 7 days. The judge wanted to send her away for THREE months.

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via reddit.com

GYQOj TIL In 1920, the New York Times published an editorial titled "A Severe Strain on Credulity," mocking scientist Robert Goddard's contention that a rocket could conceivably leave the atmosphere and even reach the moon. They later printed a retraction, the day after the launch of Apollo 11.
X0pjD TIL of the band band Too Much Joy, who were sued by Bozo the Clown for sampling him in a song, arrested on obscenity charges for covering 2 Live Crew in Florida, and had their frontman detained by the secret service after a joke he made at a concert
nkwb TIL a woman tried to kill herself by jumping off the Empire State Building, but the wind blew her back onto the building, saving her life
LRYP TIL Bette Midler sued Ford Motor Co in the 1980s for impersonating her voice in a commercial when she refused to take part despite the copyright owner’s consent. This resulted in a new legal precedent that singers’ voices are protected from commercial impersonation.
VMv4Q TIL that Henry Ford probably never said "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses" - but his tone-deafness to customers' needs in the 1920s, when GM was producing numerous models to Ford's single Model T, caused Ford's market share to drop from 70% to 15% in 6 years