› added 11 years ago

50

TIL that the first woman to earn a PhD in Computer Science in the United States also earned a Masters degree in Mathematics and Physics, helped develop computer programming languages, AND she was a Catholic nun.

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via reddit.com

1aLXD TIL the proverb, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings," derives from the traditionally buxom Valkyrie Brünnhilde from Wagner's Götterdämmerung opera. Her farewell song before the end of the world lasts almost twenty minutes and leads to the finale of the whole Ring Cycle of operas by Wagner.
07Oy TIL British empire, “the empire on which the sun never sets”, was the largest empire in history. By 1922 it held sway over about 458 million people, one-fifth of the world’s population at the time. The empire covered more than 13,012,000 sq mi, almost a quarter of the Earth’s total land area.
x6bO5 TIL that MTV, the former home to music videos, now primarily airs Ridiculousness, during a stretch of 168 hours in late June 2020, 113 hours of programming were gobbled up by the show and during one weekend in August, episodes ran for more than 36 hours uninterrupted.
wLJY8 TIL that the reason there are tags on mattresses that say "Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Law" is the result of laws that require that the contents of the mattress be listed on the label. These laws were passed in a time when many mattresses were filled with a variety of undesirable contents.
rKVo TIL the famous picture of Che Guevara looking up was actually from a photo of him looking down at a funeral.