› added 9 years ago

83

TIL that Osama Bin Laden’s relatives own a massive construction business. The company is not currently allowed to take on new contracts because of a massive crane collapse that killed 118 on September 11, 2015.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

KOPrJ TIL Many medieval bridges had shops and houses on them. One such house was the Nonsuch House on London Bridge. It was the first prefab house house having first been constructed in the Netherlands and then shipped in pieces to London to be reassembled.
6EQwl TIL of the F-11 Tiger, which during flight tests managed to shoot itself down with 20mm rounds fired from his own cannon
N8RN TIL Benjamin Franklin never patented any of his inventions. He reasoned that “we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others”, and that “we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously”
d8bAE TIL that on Queen Victoria's birthdays, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary would send her a bottle of Tokaji Aszú wine for every month she had lived to that point. For her 81st and final birthday he shipped her 972 bottles.
M7JkA TIL that during the War of 1812, Britain occupied and intended to annex the modern American state of Maine, even setting up a government for the “Crown Colony of New Ireland”, which collected £10,000 in tax revenues by war’s end