› added 3 months ago

20

TIL that in 1538, King Henry VIII of England demolished the entire village of Cuddington in Surrey to build Nonsuch Palace. The palace had yet to be completed when Henry VIII died in 1547, and was sold to and finished by Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel in 1556.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

xVdlD TIL The drinking age in the U.S. is 21 because of a federal law requiring states to make that the minimum age to purchase and consume alcohol or lose up to 10% of annual highway funding.
R5d4l TIL about the Potoooooooo horse, a famous 18th-century Thoroughbred racehorse who, as the story goes, got his name from the stable boy who misheard the name "Potatoes" and heard it literally as "pot-eight-o's" and wrote it out as such. The owner found it so funny that he kept the name.
pYyZp TIL: Of the ~16 million Americans who served during WWII, there are around 119,550 who are still remaining
gMa8W TIL in 2017 raccoons and chimps were put through the Aesop's Fable test, to see if they could learn to displace water to get food from a container. Many succeeded: the raccoons used their hands to manipulate the container in creative ways, and one chimp simply peed into the container (which worked).
Ylb7 TIL that in the movie Lord of War, The production team rented 3000 REAL SA Vz. 58 rifles to stand in for AK 47s because they were cheaper than prop guns.