› added 5 years ago

137

TIL that immediately after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, her secretary will inform the Prime Minister via a secure phone line by saying "London Bridge is down", thus initiating Operation London Bridge, a detailed procedure that outlines the action for days and weeks after the sovereign's death.

Read more theguardian.com

via reddit.com

jN96M TIL That The Black Plague Nearly Wiped Out Europe Killing In Some Cities As Many as 90% of the Population
e0ljL TIL: Back in the day of the first iPods the shuffle algorithm was overcomplicated so the audience complained about some songs being repeated more than others so Steve Jobs made an adjustment and simply said “we’re making it less random to make it feel more random”
J50k TIL LA was the first major city to sync all it’s traffic lights, doing so in 2015 after initially promising to do so in 1984. The completed synchronization supposedly increased travel speed by 16 percent and reduced travel times by 12 percent.
p8pxe TIL Silent-era film director F. W. Murnau (1888 - 1931, director of Nosferatu) had his grave robbed in 2015. His skull was removed and candle wax found in the grave suggests an occult ritual was performed. The crime is unsolved and his skull remains missing.
PjKV TIL: Instead of donating money to a New York Food Bank, Toyota offered ‘kaizen’; a Japanese word meaning “continuous improvement”. Toyota’s engineers applied kaizen to the soup kitchen, reducing the average wait time from 90 to 18 minutes.