› added 9 years ago

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TIL that they had a cocaine budget for the making of the Blues Brothers

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wjX7 TIL the drinking straw was first invented by Sumerians over 5000 years ago to avoid drinking the solid byproducts of fermentation in their beer.
PYXLe TIL of autistic savant Mark DeFriest, aka Houdini of FL. Arrested on a minor charge as a teen, he got a life sentence from escapes/attempts & pranks. He made a zip gun from a toothpaste tube, replicated keys from memory. In & out of prison since 1978, 27 yrs in solitary; he's in prison to this day.
7pxx TIL that at the age of 62, Wisdom the Albatross is the oldest known wild bird. Wisdom still circumnavigates the Pacific annually and just hatched her 30th child (at least) on Midway Atoll. Wisdom has flown 2 to 3 million miles since 1956. That’s equivalent to 4 to 6 trips to the Moon and back.
OOQ4 TIL Clair Cameron Patterson was counting lead isotopes in rocks to find the age of the earth, after finding the age of the earth he also found out there was unhealthy amounts of lead in the atmosphere caused by tetraethyl lead, Patterson campaigned to stop the use of tetraethyl lead and won in 1978.
j6jJv TIL there was a period when in Mexico graves were for subscription. Stop paying and your ancestors will be dug up