› added 5 years ago

101

TIL when Devo were opening for Sun Ra, they decided to annoy the audience by playing a half-hour rendition of Jocko Homo. They kept repeating the "Are we not men? We are Devo!" line for about 25 minutes until people started fighting them to make them stop playing.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

D1p0p TIL that the English name for the "bear" meaning "the brown one" originated as a taboo avoidance. It was feared that if the original word for bear (arkto) was spoken, it would cause the animal to appear.
M74D7 TIL: The attack on the Philippines Dec. 8 was larger in scale than Pearl Harbor but nobody remembers it. In the Philippines, then a U.S. territory, the attackers laid waste to the largest concentration of US warplanes outside North America—the foundation of the Allies’ Pacific air defense.
kOlQE TIL that methane bubbles can become frozen in place in many lakes such as Lake Baikal in Russia. The ice thickness there can reach 2 m/6.5 ft during the peak of winter coldness, trapping millions of cubic feet of methane gas under the ice until Spring arrives.
xVeoB TIL the Empire State building in New York stands on the site of the original Astoria hotel, which was built and owned by John Jacob Astor IV. Astor was of the richest men alive in his time, and left behind an estate of $87 million upon his death in 1912. Also, he died on the Titanic.
1a0eP TIL that the deepest underground subway station in the world is Arsenalna on Kiev Metro's Sviatoshynsko-Brovarska Line at 105.5 metres. It takes approximately 4 minutes to reach the bottom via two sets of escalators.