› added 11 years ago

1079

TIL that the distorted words in CAPTCHAs (the anti-spam feature) are all taken from old books and newspapers. By identifying the words, users are actually helping to transcribe these printed sources to the internet. As a result, the entire New York Times archive is now searchable back to 1850.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

OKo4 TIL that Spanish is Louis C.K.’s first language. He began to learn English when he moved to the U.S. at age seven
5YRkQ TIL Robert Pattinson was expelled from school when he was 12 for shoplifting explicit magazines and selling them later to his male classmates
694Ew TIL on January 1, 1999, MTV2 played the music video "1999" by Prince for 24 hours straight.
yVgnX TIL Simpsons creator Matt Groening was born to Homer and Marge Groening (neé Wiggum) and two of his siblings are called Maggie and Lisa. His grandfather is Abram A. Groening
wolG1 TIL a man named Max Herve-George has an insurance policy that lets him trade stocks based on last week's prices. It was known as the stupidest contract ever signed.