› added 9 years ago

292

TIL Emperor I Ferdinand of Austria had 20 seizures per day, and could not speak coherently. The only intelligible sentence he ever spoke during his 13 year reign was: “I am the emperor, and I want dumplings!”

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

kGo5 TIL that in Iceland a ‘Naming Committee’ exists that maintains a pre-approved list of male and female names. it is illegal to call your son/daughter something not appearing on these lists.
epO0D TIL that Phan Thi Mao, a young Vietnamese woman, was kidnapped and repeatedly abused by US soldiers in 1966, only one of those soldiers decided to stand up for her and reported the situation, this event became known as the “incident on Hill 192”
WkKy4 TIL that with a budget of $25,000 and a profit of $22.5 million, the film with the highest percentage of return on investment (90,000%) is 1972‘s “Deep Throat”.
b7Q7 TIL Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a short story in only six words. It was so good, it was said to made people cry: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
j9lM TIL that gold miners in Peru are clear-cutting forests, washing down the soil with high pressure hoses and putting mercury on the slurry to mine gold, ruining everything they touch.