› added 7 years ago

128

TIL a group of well preserved wooden spears were unearthed at a German coal mine. They are between 380,000 and 400,000 years old, making them at least 75x older than the pyramids of Eygpt. These are the oldest wooden artifacts ever unearthed.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

7rpMx TIL Jurors at a double-murder trial in 1994 used an Ouija board to contact the victims spirits - who told them the man was guilty. The conviction was later quashed for a re-trial.
VO5B TIL In Australia, cavities in the ground left by fossils will sometimes fill with a liquid containing dissolved opals. When the liquid evaporates, the opal remains, forming opalised fossils. The best example of this is a 6m long Plesiosaur skeleton, completely made of opal (more sources in comments)
lo84a TIL Martin Luther King, Jr., was actually born Michael King, Jr. His father, also a minister, changed his and his son's name to Martin Luther when he was five, after the famed Church Reformer.
XEElj TIL in 1903, Frank Nelson Cole received a standing ovation after an hour-long presentation during which he did not utter a single word and just did calculations on chalkboard to prove that 2^67 - 1 is a composite number.
wojBE TIL On The Cure's first big tour Robert Smith pulled double duty after the guitarist for headliner Siouxsie and the Banshees quit. Smith opened as lead singer and guitarist with The Cure and then played lead guitar for the Banshees. He said the experience heavily influenced The Cure's future sound.