› added 11 years ago

107

TIL that the personal bodyguards of the Byzantine Emperor were primarily Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons. They comprised the “Varangian Guard” which was also an Elite Unit of the Byzantine Army. The loyalty and honor of these “axe-bearing barbarians” became a trope of Byzantine writers.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

dbg7 TIL of Nobuo Fujita, the only person to ever drop a bomb on the contiguous U.S. He was later invited back to the town he unsuccessfully bombed but carried his family’s 400 y/o sword to commit seppuku if he received a hostile reception. He was greeted warmly, and donated the sword to the town instead
4V8X TIL that James Cameron received the go ahead for the film “Aliens” because of his pitch to the producers for the movie, in which he simply walked into the room, wrote “ALIEN” on a blackboard, wrote an “S” after the word, and then drew 2 vertical lines through the S to make it a dollar sign
Lke59 TIL A place in San Francisco has been making bread with the same starter for 160 years.
wLLYJ TIL The most environmentally friendly KFC/Taco Bell is located in Northampton, MA. It uses solar for heat, harvests rainwater for irrigation, recycles waste (including cooking oil), and composts.
OKG4 TIL after winning the 1962 European Cup, Benfica coach Béla Guttmann asked for a pay rise. When denied, he allegedly cursed the club and said: “Not in a hundred years from now will Benfica ever win a European Cup”. They have since reached 8 European Cup finals and lost all of them.