› added 10 years ago

114

TIL that the flashes of color you see in your eye after you rub them are called phosphenes.

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9w6QB TIL that Orthodox and Conservative Jews believe a person is Jewish if his mother is, but not if only his father is.
1aZxW TIL The entire state of Wyoming only has 2 escalators
Lk6od TIL that the term Banana republic was invented by the author O. Henry when he lived in Honduras, and described a politically unstable country dependent upon the exportation of limited-resource product.
ADxln TIL that Berkeley's football stadium lies directly on a fault line and into a mountain, causing its walls to visibly separate due to tectonic shifts.
epyWJ TIL that Sesame Street was fiercely rejected by the BBC in 1971 because it had “authoritarian aims”. Monica Sims, the network head of childrens programming at the time stated “This sounds like indoctrination, and a dangerous extension of the use of television.”