› added 4 years ago

279

TIL why "w" is pronounced double-u. The Roman alphabet did not have the letter"w" so when Latin was first used in Old English, they needed to invent a symbol for the sound made by "w" - so they made it "uu" (there was no "v" in Old English). 400 years later, Norman scribes conjoined it to become "w"

Read more grammarphobia.com

via reddit.com

DLPV TIL TED revokes your TED fellowship if you don’t attend every event of the conference, per the fellowship agreement. Writer Eddie Huang later went on to compare TED to a “Scientology summer camp”.
Akoo TIL: Superman used to be able to project a mini version of himself that had all of his super powers. Eventually he became jealous of it and tried to kill it but it ended up sacrificing itself to save him.
XpwR TIL that Zima, the original “malternative,” was made by filtering low-grade lager through charcoal (a process that strips away both color and taste), then adding citrusy flavor to make it palatable. The drink survived until 2008.
7rJ9x TIL during filming of the chestburster scene in Alien, Ridley Scott wasn't getting the reaction he wanted from the cast, so he privately told the SFX team to spray them with an enormous amount of blood during the next take, which caused some of the cast to become physically ill. They used that take.
QJ759 TIL that Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan recieve 100% of royalties and retain sole writing credit on the hip-hop single "Deja Vu (Uptown Baby)" by Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz.