› added 13 years ago

327

TIL That author Kurt Vonnegut threatened to sue Pall Mall cigarettes for not killing him.

Read more goodreads.com

via reddit.com

rRoy4 TIL The holes in honeycombs don't actually start out as hexagons. Bees create circular tubes staggered with one another. The heat formed by the activity of the bees softens the wax, which connects the gaps between the holes. Then the wax hardens into the the most energy efficient shape, the hexagon.
EgyxP TIL of Jean-Claude Touche, an up-and-coming French composer in the 1940's. He was fatally wounded at the age of 18 on August 25, 1944, the final day of the Liberation of Paris, while trying to move a wounded person to safety.
mGly TIL That when Soviet Archaeologists opened the Mongol conqueror Timor’s tomb, they found a message on the inside saying ‘Whosoever Disturbs My Tomb Will Unleash an Invader More Terrible than I.’ On that very same day, Nazi Germany commenced Operation Barbossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.
xpE0 TIL that Scientology claimed they have 3.5 million members in the U.S. but a 2008 survey showed the number to be 25,000.
M7o40 TIL following his death in 68AD, there was a popular conspiracy theory that Roman emperor Nero was still secretly alive