› added 5 years ago

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TIL the is a term for an "act of throwing someone or something out of a window" called defenestration. It originated in Prague when on two occasions (1419 and 1618) government officials where thrown out of windows, both times starting a war (the Hussite and Thirty Years War)

xwj7 TIL that Florida investigators recreated a home fire to prove that a man had committed arson. Instead, they found that accidental fires could produce burn patterns that looked exactly like gasoline fires, and that signs of arson that investigators had been relying on for years were unfounded.
RQVl TIL that 13,000 years ago, North America had a lake bigger than the Black Sea. When it finally drained it cause global sea levels to rise as much as 3 meters.
gM5WW TIL former NBA great Michael Jordan has been trying to sell his 56,000-square-foot Chicago mansion for over seven years with no luck. He's still paying more than $100,000 in annual property taxes despite not living in the house for years.
oBEeK TIL the Russian biplane An-2 "has no stall speed" - if the aircraft dips below a certain speed, spring-loaded slats pop out of the wings and the aircraft will "sink at the rate of a parachute".
oRmn7 TIL that the very first "crowd wave" at a sports event ocurred spontaneously. At a Colorado Rockies NHL ice hockey game in 1980, a section of the crowd rose to their feet slightly later than the section beside them. This continued around the area to complete a "wave", without having been prompted.