› added 11 years ago

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TIL Chunosuke Matsuyama, a Japanese Seamen, sent a message in a bottle in 1784 that his ship had wrecked. It washed up in 1935 in the village where he was born.

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41d6 TIL there was a plot to kill the Vice President and Secretary of State concurrently with the Lincoln assassination. The Secretary of State was stabbed in the face but lived, and the assailant who was to kill the Vice President got drunk instead.
gMoZD TIL that Edison offered $50000 to Tesla if he succeeded in improving the efficiency of Edison's prototypical dynamos. Despite Tesla making a great deal of progress, Edison claimed that the offer was a joke
ANM87 TIL: While the South Pole lies on a continental land mass, the North Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean amid waters that are almost permanently covered with constantly shifting sea ice.
0gZv TIL That when a stretched out slinky is dropped, the bottom stays still in mid air until the two ends meet (Skip to 16 seconds)
jNQgM TIL J.R.R. Tolkien sold the film rights to Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit in 1969 for £100000 and 7.5% of the gross revenue. His estate ended up suing New Line Cinema for £75 million in 2008