› added 11 years ago

734

TIL In 526 there was a worldwide dust cloud that blocked out the sun for an entire year. It resulted in widespread famine and disease. More than 80% of Scandinavia and China starved to death, 30% of Europe died and empires fell. The cause is unknown.

Read more archaeology.about.com

via reddit.com

R5Z46 TIL that in 1973, artist Chris Burden took a handgun, aimed it at an airplane taking off from Los Angeles International Airport, and fired several shots. The act was filmed for a performative art piece titled 747. The piece was meant to depict the idea that you cannot regulate everybody.
X0rEj TIL of Amtor. Edgar Rice Burroughs (author of Tarzan) also wrote a 5-book series set on Venus, which was imagined as a water world. The main character, a human astronaut, meets princesses, becomes a pirate twice in the series, and is crowned a prince after the overthrow of a kingdom.
PYPpO TIL Christopher Reeve's accident was so severe that he needed surgery to reattach his skull and spine. While awaiting the surgery, a man in a blue hat and yellow scrubs met with him, jokingly claiming he was a proctologist and that Reeves needed a rectal exam. That man was Robin Williams.
nr6d TIL The Simpsons are responsible for the popularisation of the word ‘meh’.
neRkB TIL about the Guatemala syphilis experiments, US-run non-consensual experiments on vulnerable members of the Guatemalan population. The lead physician John Charles Cutler was also involved with the more well-known Tuskegee Syphilis Study.