› added 11 years ago

1221

TIL Stone Age Europeans are thought to have created brief “gifs”, by drawing two versions of an image, one over the other, on cave walls. The flickering of a torch light would “animate” the image

16odX TIL that the Magyarab people are a community living in Nubia, along the Nile in Sudan and Egypt, that have distant Hungarian ancestors who intermarried with locals in the 16th century.
awvEZ TIL that the Library of Alexandria was accidentally burnt down by Julius Caesar the same year he met Cleopatra. Historians estimate that humanity lost 1000 years of technological advancement.
mxKgY TIL in 1964 a super cyclone destroyed a town called Dhanushkodi, making it into a ghost town. The storm overturned a train entering it's railway station killing over 200 passengers. 4 radio operators braved the storm to continue broadcasting, and survived by clinging on to a bridge for 12 hours.
DQwaJ TIL modern tests for high value old paintings search for carbon 14 isotopes, none of which existed in the world before the trinity nuclear tests of the 40’s. Any paintings containing this isotope are clearly from after the tests and thus, a forgery.
b6mVZ TIL: French Canadians has a tale featuring a La Chasse-galerie or "Bewitched Canoe". Lumberjacks made a deal with the devil for a flying canoe to visit their lovers quickly. The condition was they can't fly over churches or mention God. Their success varied each story. It was based on The Wild Hunt.