› added 11 years ago

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TIL that Orson Wells’ famous radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds (which aired 75 years ago today) actually caused almost none of the public panic for which it became famous; newspapers’ over-reporting of the incident was actually an attempt to discredit radio as a news source

R5kx9 TIL the average annual amount of rainfall is greater in Sydney than London - about two times as much in fact. Rain generally falls as light drizzle in London and torrential downpours in Sydney.
Kvea TIL A Florida man was once wrongfully imprisoned for 21 years for killing his seven children with poison. He was released when the children’s babysitter confessed in a nursing home.
nnM9 TIL the plot of the pilot episode of the show “The Lone Gunmen”, a spinoff of the X-Files, featured 3 conspiracy theorists thwarting a secret government plot to fly a plane into the World Trade Center and blame it on foreign interests in order to boost defense spending, it aired march 2001.
7r1m7 TIL severe heartbreak can cause emotional trauma which imprints on individuals' psychobiological wellbeing, affecting future responses to rejection or loss. A key factor to the trauma is 'being left' triggers primal separation fear – the fear of being left with no one to care for one's vital needs.
NXVy8 TIL swans in the United Kingdom belong to the crown, except in Orkney and Shetland: there they are the property of the people due to udal law, a Norse-derived legal system