› added 5 years ago

210

TIL of Erwin Kreuz, a German tourist who planned to visit San Francisco but accidentally disembarked early, and then spent days looking for the Golden Gate Bridge and other Bay Area landmarks in Bangor, Maine. Amused and touched, Maine residents turned him into a local celebrity.

KO15E TIL The longest cricket test match in history lasted nine days and ended in a draw
NxV6 TIL that in 2001, British author Giles Foden (Last King of Scotland) compared Eminem to Robert Browning, one of the foremost Victorian poets, and remarked that “a brief examination of ‘Stan’ reveals it to have all the depth and texture of the greatest examples of English verse.”
rLR4 TIL Jared from Subway ran a business where he’d rent pornography out of his dormroom at Indiana University. The endeavor became so successful that the only place he had time to eat at was the Subway that opened on the 1st floor of the building.
ZpdRa TIL mūmiyā, a type of resin/bitumen used to treat diseases in traditional Islamic medicine, was transliterated as “mumia” in Western Europe during medieval times, which misled Europeans to think it was related to mummies and made them start consuming/trafficking human mummies from Egypt into Europe
JYQ9V TIL that in an urban revitalization effort, Cleveland attempted to set the Guinness Book of World Records by releasing millions of balloons from its downtown area. 60% of them wound up in Lake Erie, stymieing a rescue effort for two missing fishermen. Guinness denied the city any official records.