› added 3 months ago

13

TIL that Jeffrey Hudson, a court dwarf of the English Queen Henrietta Maria, shot a man in a duel, after which he went into exile, was captured by Barbary pirates, spent 25 years enslaved in North Africa during which he grew 25 inches, which he attributed to the hard conditions.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

epgVD TIL: That Mark Chapman, killer of John Lennon, has been allowed regular conjugal visits since he accepted solitary confinement in 2014. He is allowed to spend 44 hours alone with his wife in a specially built prison home. He also gets occasional visits from his sister, clergy, and a few friends.
jKnM TIL in 1896 Auburn ROTC cadets greased the skids of a railway track before a football game. The train with the incoming team couldn’t stop and slid halfway to the next town, forcing them to walk 5 miles to the game and possibly contributing to their 45-0 loss.
Z8mDv TIL Spaceballs wasn't the the first Star Wars parody, a 13 minute short titled Hardware Wars released in 1978 was the first. With a production cost of $8k and box office of $1million it even beat the earnings ratio of Star Wars. During a 1999 interview George Lucas named it his favorite.
erVE TIL up to 80% of olive oil sold in America is fake oil manufactured by the Italian Mafia
WByo TIL the prosthetic make-up Jim Carrey wore for the grinch took about 8 hours to apply. Carrey felt so horribly confined and uncomfortable in the latex skin he needed counseling from a CIA agent who taught him torture-resistance techniques.