› added 4 years ago

211

TIL that Reba McEntire was offered the role of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" in James Cameron's Titanic, but turned it down due to filming being delayed beyond the 3 months she set aside to film it and she was worried about the people on her payroll not being able to work.

Read more ew.com

via reddit.com

Xb48 TIL of the first person to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge - a professional high diver who wanted to ‘demonstrate that people did not die by simply falling through the air’. He proved himself correct after falling, safely, 135 feet through the air; dying from impact upon hitting the water.
m7YE TIL: the bikini swimsuit was named after the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island. The inventor wanted to imply the bikini was as momentous an invention as the new bomb. This was a time when beautiful women were “bombshells” and anything cool was “atomic.”
v1jxj TIL Fuel-Air bombs make you suffer: The intense pressure wave and vacuum ruptures your lungs but "causes minimal damage to brain tissue…it is possible that victims...are not rendered unconscious by the blast, but instead suffer for several seconds or minutes while they suffocate"
R58na TIL that Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach have a "tropical rainforest" climate, as opposed to much of Miami, which only has a "tropical monsoon" climate
wLOPY TIL Samsung accidentally issued 2,000 employees 1,000 shares of stock for 37 minutes before realizing the error. 16 employees sold during that time for approx. $9,000,000 each.