› added 4 years ago

206

TIL, when Maxim Gorky arrived in the US in 1906, he initially received a warm welcome. President Roosevelt, Mark Twain et al. planned to meet him. But when it was reported that Gorky was accompanied not by his wife, but by his mistress, his hotel threw him out and he got cancelled.

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kNEe TIL that the most pilots aren’t allowed to have a beard because of the shape of an oxygen mask
5RRk TIL that in Iceland it is common to carry alcohol openly outdoors, and to keep their hands warm and beverage cold, locals use a “beer mitten” that was invented by Icelanders.
D1Wme TIL about Benford's Law - if you get a bunch of random numbers, the most common leading digit will be the number one (around 30%)
96QG TIL in Albania there are the buneshas: a whole group of women who choose to remain virgins and live their live as men.
9MrD 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.