› added 6 years ago

98

TIL of convicted train robber Frank Grigware, who escaped from federal prison in 1910. A short 6 years later, he became mayor of the small town of Spirit River, Alberta. The FBI discovered him in 1933, but his extradition request was dropped due to 'serious doubts' about his original conviction.

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5Vn8n TIL that the "red lips" film poster for The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a spoof of the Jaws movie poster, which had been released that same year
6mKm TIL that the color purple is the royal color because the dye was so expensive to make: “dye-makers had to crack open the snail’s shell, extract a purple-producing mucus and expose it to sunlight for a precise amount of time. It took as many as 250,000 mollusks to yield just one ounce of usable dye”
4kAGb TIL: There are at least 3 known sets of Auschwitz tattoo stamps, 2 sets are in Museums and one was sold at an auction in 2021 to much outcry. It contains stamps of interchangeable needles to permanently brand numbers onto skin and the auction included an original Nazi instruction booklet.
1aLXD TIL the proverb, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings," derives from the traditionally buxom Valkyrie Brünnhilde from Wagner's Götterdämmerung opera. Her farewell song before the end of the world lasts almost twenty minutes and leads to the finale of the whole Ring Cycle of operas by Wagner.
loEP1 TIL that the "pink slime" that sometimes grows in bathrooms isn't a mold, it's actually an airborne bacterium called Serratia marcescens that feeds on soap, hence why it thrives in bathtubs.