› added 5 years ago

134

TIL of Toupie Lowther, the first openly lesbian woman in sport, who toured the tennis tournaments of Europe in her open-top Mercedes-Benz, had a science degree from the Sorbonne, was a fencer, a practitioner of jujitsu, and assembled a mutlinational all-woman ambulance unit she led to the WWI front.

Read more plutobooks.com

via reddit.com

QJ9Bp TIL: Monty Python and the Holy Grail's $319,000 budget was bankrolled by Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Elton John, and Jethro Tull.
5YMQ8 TIL The first computers in the White House were installed by Jimmy Carter's administration. In 1978, the West Wing was equipped with a Hewlett Packard 3000. By the end of Carter's term, the White House had purchased its first laser printer
vPV1D TIL Ever since she was 12, Ellen Degeneres' idol has been Dian Fossey after seeing her hold a gorilla in 1970 National Geographic. Fifty years later, Ellen set up the $15 million "Ellen DeGeneres Campus" at Virunga Massif for gorilla conservation and research
N7ArN TIL that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote 23 sequels to Tarzan of the Apes. The ape-man discovers he is John Clayton, Lord of Greystoke, fights alongside Germans in WWI, finds a colony of Atlantis and the City of Gold, befriends a tribe of dog-sized humans, and has other bizarre adventures.
NXLoM TIL Venus Fly Traps are exclusively found in the wild in the Carolina states, specifically around the Carolina Bays, and due to poaching for export/resale and inability to clear underbrush that eventually smothers the low-dwelling carnivorous plants, they are now endangered.