› added 7 years ago

81

TIL J.R.R. Tolkien is credited with inventing Orcs.

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DQ94P TIL that Lee Harvey Oswald was Teddy Roosevelt's third cousin, whereas FDR was Teddy's fifth cousin.
e0EQb TIL that the British town of Berwick Upon Tweed has changed between being part of Scotland and England 14 times. At one point its status was so ambiguous that declarations of war had to specify that nations were at war with "Scotland, England, and Berwick Upon Tweed."
E1700 TIL that many of the props used in the 2009 film ‘District 9’ were reused from a planned Halo movie that fell through.
W7G6d TIL in 1991 a warehouse in Wisconsin holding over 4,000 tonnes of butter caught on fire. After five hours the melted butter flooded and formed a "butter river" that was 2-3 feet deep and as much as 5 feet deep in some places. The fire lasted for 8 days.
epBJE TIL: Baroque composer JS Bach used to hide his own name into his complex music using a "Musical Cryptogram": other composers have done the same since