› added 6 years ago

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TIL that The New Year’s Eve confetti in NYC is made of people’s hopes and dreams. The Times Square Visitor Centre wall is open year round for people to put Post-Its up with their next-year’s wishes. Those wishes are made into confetti for when the ball drops.

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via reddit.com

v1MP8 TIL that while filming 'Batman Begins' a drunk driver crashed into the Batmobile because he thought it was an alien spacecraft. "This poor drunken guy who didn’t have a license. [He] said he got so panicked when he saw the car that he thought aliens were landing," explained Christian Bale.
NX74J TIL that there is one Academy Award winning performance that is lost: Emil Jannings won the first Best Actor prize for 'The Way of All Flesh', which has no known surviving complete copies.
QJdBp TIL Sixdegrees.com was considered the first true recognizable social media site. Created in 1997, the site allowed users to upload a profile and make friends with other users.
nZgb TIL that hydraulic fracturing (fracking), was often considered too expensive to realistically pursue until an engineer discovered more efficient methods in 1997. Although Nicholas Steinsberger saved his company and changed the industry, he did not receive so much as a bonus.
Y7v9G TIL: SCOTUS decision in 1922 denied Japanese-American Takao Ozawa citizenship ruling that only white "Caucasians" were eligible. The next year, a Sikh man named Bhagat Singh Thind sued arguing that he should be eligible because he is from the Caucasus. He was also denied.