Post * 71eX — Curious Curator

› added 11 years ago

116

TIL that the justification for both times the United States invaded Iraq were based on testimony that was proven false.

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N7L5J TIL the six-cylinder Holden Torana was made just because Holden, GM's Australian arm, did not have a four-cylinder engine, which was considered more suitable for a car of that size. The unusual move turned out successful and launched a group of imitations from other brands.

Vvek TIL in 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote to the cotton workers of Manchester, UK to thank them for their stance on anti-slavery.

rRWMo TIL writer Alan Ball was inspired to write a story about the hardship of living an authentic, happy life in the age of superficiality after he watched a plastic bag blowing in the wind outside the World Trade Center for 10 minutes. That story was American Beauty and he won an Oscar in 2000.

LoPQ TIL when St. Augustine, writing in the fourth century A.D., observed his teacher St. Ambrose reading to himself without moving his tongue or murmuring, he thought the unusual behavior so noteworthy as to record it in his “Confessions”.

698aQ TIL the ancient Greek alphabet -- and by implication today's English alphabet -- can be traced back to a single vote held in Athens in 403 BC on whether to adapt the "Ionic Alphabet", the first of the "Euclidean" alphabets. It supposedly took them one year to implement the metric change.