› added 11 years ago

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TIL that the architect who designed Washington DC walked away in anger and took the plans with him but a man named Benjamin Banneker, who had glanced at them, reproduced his designs from memory and that’s the Washington DC we have today.

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wNZo TIL that the first aerial refueling occurred when Wesley May climbed from a Lincoln Standard to a Curtiss Jenny with a 5 gallon can strapped to his back in 1921.
xRmB TIL that a Portland dairy was forced to pay staff over $10 million in back pay because of a missing Oxford comma in the state overtime laws.
PYGBO TIL that for 15 years, Sweden thought enemy submarines were invading their waters, but it turned out to be farting herrings. Shoals were huge enough for the collective flatulence to register on military radar, producing sounds and small bubbles which were mistakenly identified as Russian subs.
kl7m TIL a man named Russell Jones, an art director from Park Slope, Brooklyn, received numerous phone calls from Wu-Tang fans who thought he was Russell Jones aka Ol’ Dirty Bastard. One time, Jones received a phone call from Method Man himself, who asked to speak to “Dirty”.
awno TIL That a Scientists once carved some meat out of 36,000-year-old baby bison and made a stew, The stew was not only edible, but deemed “acceptable.”