› added 12 years ago

190

TIL that in 2011, Comcast asked its staff to vote on The Consumerist’s “Worst Company in America” poll so they wouldn’t “win”. The Consumerist noticed the traffic from teamcomcast.com and asked them to not “game the system”

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via reddit.com

Z8B6B TIL that Zhang Xianzhong was a leader of a peasant revolt who conquered sichuan and practically depopulated the region so thoroughly that some sources estimate that 2 million people died under his rule.
YpdW TIL that, as Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin) was only 17 when filming Superbad, his mother was required to be on set during the filming of his sex scene.
epOW4 TIL Mushrooms are more closely related to animals than plants
QNWed TIL women POWs imprisoned by the Japanese on Sumatra in 1943-44 created an orchestra using only their voices, and managed to perform 3 concerts in captivity. The orchestra ended less than a year later, after more than half of the members died and the other half became too weak to sing.
9wM7D TIL that the two-man astronaut crews on the first four space shuttle missions wore special launch suits and sat in military jet-style seats that allowed them to eject at altitudes as high as 80,000 feet. These were no longer used once the shuttle was declared "operational" for future NASA missions.