› added 9 years ago

264

TIL that tennis player Vitas Gerulaitis lost 16 consecutive times to Jimmy Connors. When finally beating Connors on their 17th meeting, he said “And let that be a lesson to you all. Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row”

Read more sportige.com

via reddit.com

XgDX TIL Pearl Jam sued Ticketmaster for creating a monopoly on ticket sales. Pearl Jam wanted to charge no more than $18.50 for tickets in ’94, with service fees of no more than $1.80. Ticketmaster balked, saying that it needed at least $2 in fees simply to cover its own costs.
80OV TIL Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times, and it is one of the oldest cities in the world.
rjYd TIL lobsters used to be food for slaves and was used as fertilizer and fish bait. But that changed in the mid 1800s with the invention of canned food and railway transportation. Canned lobster became popular enough that people took trips to the coast for fresh lobster.
Z8BnB TIL When Apollo 12 deliberately crashed the Ascent Stage of its Lunar Module onto the Moon's surface, NASA reported that the Moon rang like a bell for almost an hour, leading to arguments that it must be hollow like a bell.
8elaa TIL that the idea of a Potemkin Village was used in multiple countries to cover up an unpleasant or damaging part of town. It derived from stories of a former lover of Catherine II who wanted to impress her so he made portable villages and moved them to reuse in the next part of Crimea, 1787