› added 10 years ago

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TIL that six soviet cosmonauts, while working in space on the MIR station, reported to mission control all six of them were seeing aliens with human faces and large wings. Pravda confirmed the report and said that it was a group hallucination.

GAn61 TIL a minority of the world's languages are "ergative"—the object of a transitive verb & the subject of an intransitive verb are treated the same. For example: whereas in English we'd say "SHE likes HER" & "SHE walks"; in Basque (spoken in N. Spain/SW France), it'd be "SHE likes HER" but "HER walks"
GYlAg TIL that the Statue of Liberty cost the French an estimated $250,000 (more than $5.5 million in today’s money). The money came from fundraising efforts such as auctions, a lottery, and boxing matches, both in Europe and the U.S.
1aGlW TIL that the iconic THX sound that plays before trailers isn't actually very loud, it just feels loud because it contains a spectrum of frequencies that go from low to high.
gMZBb TIL in the "Why did the chicken cross the road?" joke, the original punchline came from the double-meaning in the phrase the 'other side'. The other side could refer to the other side of the road, and it also could refer to the afterlife. The joke later became thought of and used as an anti-joke.
4kKy5 TIL Married With Children never had canned laughter. They filmed in front of a live audience that reacted to the scenes. That's why there's sometimes long, awkward pauses when they waited for the production team to shut down the audience.