› added 9 years ago

172

TIL that despite having a population of 310 million, 47% of the USA remains unoccupied. Of the 11,078,300 census blocks in the country, 4,871,270 reported a population of zero in 2010.

Read more news.buzzbuzzhome.com

via reddit.com

wooWP TIL Stephen Gough, "Naked Rambler", walked the length of the UK naked. He attempted to do it again in 2005 and 2006 but was arrested, and has spent much of the intervening years in prison, having been repeatedly arrested for public nudity.
oAXW TIL a species of vulture has been found to fly at 37,000 feet (almost 2 miles higher than Mt. Everest). This was discovered in 1973 when a jet struck a bird at cruising altitude and had to make an emergency landing.
ADoEn TIL The offensive term 'Mongoloid' or 'Mongol' derives from an old word for people with Downs Syndrome. This was due to the shape of their eyes, with the epicanthic fold resembling that of the Mongolian race.
9n9B TIL that the 1964 war movie ‘The Battle of the Bulge’ was so historically inaccurate that President Dwight D. Eisenhower came out of retirement and held a press conference just to denounce the film.
jNerj TIL about the concept of 'invented tradition', in which something believed or touted to be ancient is actually modern, such as ancestral Scottish clan-tartans, which are actually a 19th-century creation.