› added 12 years ago

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TIL that an alcohol’s “proof” was meant to measure whether it been watered down. The “proof” (approximately 100) of good booze was that it would catch on fire.

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M7AkK TIL: In 2021 someone in Iceland applied to name their child Aquamann, however this was rejected by the Personal Naming Committee
Vd4G TIL that during production of the notoriously convoluted 1946 noir classic The Big Sleep, neither the director nor the screenwriters knew if a character was supposed to have commit suicide or been murdered, so they contacted the book’s author, Raymond Chandler, and he didn’t know either.
NXLYe TIL near the end of her life, Ada Lovelace had a religious transformation and began to repent the conduct of her life. After confessing something to her husband 3 months before her death, he abandoned her bedside. It is not known what she told him.
6AXZ TIL during the 1981 Indy 500, a driver and a mechanic were engulfed in a flameless and smokeless methanol fire.
b6lpa TIL of Strivers' Row, a district of Harlem, NYC, whose houses were built in the 1890s. The houses sat empty for more than 20 years because at first the owner would only sell to white people, but by the 1920s the area had become the leading district for upper-middle class black families.