› added 3 months ago

9

TIL that Astérix, the first French satellite to reach orbit, was named after the cartoon character of the same name

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

XEV06 TIL there was a US Marine Sergeant in WWII named Hitler. When asked why he didn't change his name he simply said, "Let the other guy change his".
Z8Bk4 TIL a Hapax legomenon is a word or expression that occurs only once in the entire written record of a language. For example, Slæpwerigne, "sleep-weary", occurs exactly once in the Old English corpus, in the Exeter Book.
awoxZ TIL The National Library of Sweden has a 16th century book that can be read six different ways.
DKXY TIL that when male honey bees mate, their penises explode and they die. During the queen’s nuptial flight, she’ll mate with about a dozen partners and leave a trail of dead, penisless bees in her wake.
N7mG1 TIL "The 1 Second Film" is a film project intending to feature 1 second of animation followed by 1 hour of credits. $1 or above donors to the film's crowdfund received a producer credit, this caused havoc as the IMDb listing reached over 3,000 producers. Ultimately the film was removed from IMDb.