› added 1 year ago

50

Today I learned that in the era of silent films, there was a popular actor named Harrison Ford who is unrelated to the Harrison Ford who played Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Both Harrison Fords have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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Dpgg TIL that the phrase “spittin’ image” is a shortening of the phrase “spit and image,” indicating that a child is both the spit (substance) and image (likeness) of their parents.
dDwBQ TIL about the 1886 short story “How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid Atlantic by a Survivor”, which served as a cautionary tale about the dangers of ships having too few lifeboats. Its author, William Thomas Stead, later died during the Titanic sinking in 1912.
rRWo1 TIL the word quarantine comes from the Venetian "quaranta" meaning 40, for the 40 days that ships were supposed to stay off the coast in Europe to prevent the spread of the black death in the 1300s
NZgJ TIL that Oxford University is so old that no one really even knows when it was founded.
Kdp9 TIL a man once named his 2 sons Winner and Loser. Loser was good at school and became a detective. Winner ended up homeless and in and out of jail.