› added 4 years ago

51

TIL in 1633, a Turkish gentleman by the name of Lagâri Hasan Çelebi launched himself into the air on a rocket filled with 140 lbs of gunpowder. He landed in the river and was rewarded with silver by the Sultan. Mythbusters later tested this story in 2009 and considered it implausible.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

R79n7 TIL the last line of the psalm which the Boney M hit song Rivers of Babylon is based on, is "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stone"
ALm7 TIL A set of British twins separated at birth and raised by different adopted parents, fell in love and got married only to realise that they were brother and sister
n8M7 TIL that in many states, it’s completely legal to ride in the bed of a truck or trunk of a car, and in many others, it’s restricted in other ways(over 18 only, etc.)
Xpjj TIL that Philip K. Dick never saw the completed version of “Blade Runner” and Ridley Scott never finished reading “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
88A8 TIL during WW2 Canadian soldier Leo Major singlehandedly captured 93 Nazis in the Netherlands. He later singlehandedly captured the town of Zwolle from the Germans. And he was blind in one eye.