› added 5 years ago

172

TIL in 2001, a baby bear, lion, and tiger were rescued from a drug dealers house in Atlanta. They had bonded as a trio and remained friends for over 15 years. Usually as animals grow older, they grow apart from other species, but these three remained close and even lived in the same habitat.

Read more huffpost.com

via reddit.com

loG47 TIL that a significant contribution to the 2003 NE blackout was the tendency of high-voltage lines to sag under high current. As one power line sagged, touched an unmaintained tree and faulted, the load on remaining lines increased, causing a cascade of sagging onto trees and faulting.
QNarX TIL Henry VIII had an illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy. He was briefly a candidate for the English throne, and to prevent Henry VIII's marriage annulement and break from the church, the pope considered suggesting instead to allow FitzRoy to marry his own sister, Mary Tudor, and proclaimed heir
kOXGe TIL of the Teapot Dome Scandal: Between 1921-1923 during Harden's presidency, the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, secretly leased federal oil reserves to the Mammoth Oil Company in exchange for $200k worth of liberty bonds. He became the first Cabinet secretary to go to prison.
dlKd TIL Henry Winkler (‘The Fonz’) has dyslexia, has written an 18-book children’s series whose main character is dyslexic, and he plays the kid’s music teacher in a BBC TV adaptation. The teacher is based on the one person who provided him moral support in his own schooling.
6Egr7 TIL in 1997, a physics student demonstrating the Leidenfrost effect by holding liquid nitrogen in his mouth accidentally swallowed the substance, resulting in near-fatal injuries. This was the first case in medical literature of liquid nitrogen ingestion