› added 10 years ago

506

TIL that the Roman Emperor Nero bought a young boy, married him, castrated him and dressed him up as a girl at public events.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

OoWpe TIL Japan is the second largest music market in the world after the US, in spite of not being a huge population. Physical sales are still huge there, with more record stores than the US.
V9JQ TIL: The U.S bought Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 for $7.2million ($122million today). Since 1959 Alaska has produced $157billion worth of oil. That’s a return of nearly 130,000%!
LrXp TIL the documents pertaining to Martin Luther King’s assassination is only slated to be released by the US government in 2027
jNQ5M TIL that Beethoven composed "Fur Elise" for a student he was infatuated with. As she was a mediocre pianist, he made the beginning of the song simple to play. However, she refused to marry him, so he added much harder parts, knowing she would never be able to play it.
0Dkp TIL that the anecdote that says a frog will jump out of a pot of boiling water if thrown in, but sit in a pot of water as it is slowly brought to a boil has been shown to be untrue by modern biologists.