› added 7 months ago

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TIL: London Bridge had up to 140 houses built on it for 550 years. All of the houses were shops and was one of London's major shopping streets. Demolition of the last houses was completed in 1761 due to fire and other structural issues, and to widen the bridge.

R7ll9 TIL Pierce Brosnan grew up poor in Ireland, was left by his parents, raised by relatives and sent to a boarding house, studied painting, joined the circus, and was first discovered as an actor by playwright Tennessee Williams. Both his first wife and daughter died of ovarian cancer.
XEX1R TIL the longest poem in the world is the Mahābhārata, a Hindu text. It's literally 5 times the length of the bible and the Iliad and the odyssey combined! It has 220000 verses and about 1.8 million words
0pb1 TIL That The Monkees’ lead singer, Davy Jones, was so popular that a singer with the same name changed his in order to avoid confusion. That man became David Bowie.
jNbKp TIL: Jaywalking was made a crime, primarily due to car makers wanting to shift blame of accidents to pedestrians, instead of drivers. This was done to help prevent the image of the car as being a dangerous luxury, which would have hurt sales.
wDy8 TIL the white Australian silver-medalist, who stood with the two African-American sprinters giving the “black power” salute in the 1968 Olympics, was wearing a Civil Rights button to stand in solidarity with them and did so for the rest of his life despite being ostracized in his own country.