› added 11 years ago

270

TIL when Nathan Lane told his mother he was gay, she replied “I would rather you were dead”. To which Nathan said, “I knew you’d understand.”

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67ol TIL that tinfoil hats not only don’t block radio waves, but have actually been shown to amplify them.
gr9y4 TIL about George de Hebesy who dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from taking them. After the war, he found the solution undisturbed and reconstituted the gold. The Nobel Foundation then recast the medals and presented them back to the winners.
XQP8 TIL that on the way to his inauguration, President Franklin Pierce’s only living child was crushed to death in front of him and his wife in a train derailment. Pierce descended into alcoholism, the First Lady into depression, and the country into violence.
wNrY TIL Wilhelm Röntgen who discovered x-rays refused to patent his discovery as he ‘wanted mankind as a whole to benefit from practical applications of the same’
KOaWJ TIL the kiwi was originally called the chinese gooseberry, and was only named the kiwi because of "branding and psychology"