› added 11 years ago

85

TIL Sen. Harry Reid tried to strangle a gangster who offered him a bribe

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

R7oda TIL The song "Midnight Special" is about a steam locomotive that used to pass the Louisiana State Prison and its light would shine into the cells. Prisoners developed a superstition that having the light shine on you would bring fortune and freedom.
dDlxQ TIL cigarette smoking in the US went from <5% in 1900 compared to 42% in 1965
woxKo TIL that Austria, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, and Switzerland were technically "third world countries", because they were not officially aligned with NATO (first world) or the Warsaw Pact (second world) during the Cold War. The term does not actually have anything to do with quality of life.
rvv4 TIL that velociraptors are actually much smaller than they appear in Jurassic Park; they are modeled after a related species. However, shortly after production of the movie, a raptor species (Utahraptor) was discovered that was extremely similar to the movie raptors.
JYma8 TIL Several mosquito species have a proboscis that’s strong enough to make it through the tight weave of denim. There’s also lots of space between the threads that make up socks, and mosquitoes can easily suck blood through those spaces