› added 1 month ago

12

TIL that Robert Frost was to read "Dedication" at the inauguration of JFK, a poem he had composed for the occasion, but due to the brightness of the sunlight he was unable to see the text, so he recited another poem of his "The Gift Outright" by memory instead.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

a8V9L TIL: On January 5, 2002, Charles J. Bishop stole a Cessna 172 light aircraft and crashed it into the side of the bank of America tower. His mother filed a lawsuit against Roche Laboratories claiming that Accutane had side effects such as depression and suicidal actions.
MLBW TIL the town Fucking, Austria’s only reported crime was theft of many Fucking road signs. In ‘05 they were replaced with antitheft ones & CCTV cameras to deter tourists filming sex there. PoliceChief:“We wont stand for Fucking signs being removed. It may be amusing…but Fuckings simply Fucking to us”
pLnp TIL the CIA backed the genocide of communists in Indonesia that killed approximately 500,000 people and the leader of which became the president of the UN General Assembly.
EgbKW TIL that in the Pirahã language, speakers must use a suffix that indicates the source of their information: hearsay, circumstantial evidence, personal observation, etc. They cannot be ambiguous about the evidentiality of their utterances.
Pg5g TIL 12-year-old Steve Jobs called the home of Bill Hewlett (Hewlett-Packard) to request parts for building a frequency counter. Hewlett gave him the parts, then gave him a job building frequency counters.