› added 1 year ago

169

TIL that Stephen King was so disappointed with Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”, that he teamed up with director Mick Garris in 1997 to remake the film into a miniseries that is more true to the novel than the original film.

xVgQ5 TIL the word 'economics' comes from the Ancient Greek word 'οἰκονόμος' meaning "household management". The Ancient Babylonians developed the earliest system of economics in terms of laws on debt, legal contracts & private property.
X0jnk TIL before the Great Depression (1930's), the US President at the time came up with a tariff strategy called the Hawley Tariff Act, despite warnings against it. It was imposed on many other nations, including Mexico and Canada, who then retaliated with their own tariffs, causing worldwide suffering.
7ryjZ TIL that if the universe had one dimension of space and three dimensions of time instead of the other way around, the speed of light would be the LOWER limit of speed instead of the upper limit. Thus, everything would be made of tachyons - theoretical faster-than-light particles.
yQPnp TIL in 1209, crusaders were sent to siege Béziers (in France) as many citizens had become heretics. Before the attack, the army asked the Pope's ambassador on how to distinguish between heretics and Catholics, he replied: "Kill them all; let God sort them out." All 20,000 inhabitants were killed.
nW5Pr TIL In 2014 a Jamaican phone scammer threatened to kill a retired American man named William Webster when he wouldn't fall for the scam. The scammer didn't know Webster was the former director of both the FBI and CIA. He was arrested when he flew to NYC in 2017 and sentenced to 6 years in prison.