› added 4 years ago

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TIL United Way set a world record by releasing almost one-and-a-half million balloons that resulted in unexpected disaster. The event was intended to be a harmless fundraising publicity stunt, but the balloons drifted back over the city, Lake Erie, and landed in the surrounding area.

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0d8Lj TIL René Lacoste won 7 Grand Slam tennis titles, won a bronze medal at the 1924 Olympics, founded the Lacoste clothing company, and invented the first tubular steel racket at a time when wood rackets were the norm.
w6OP TIL that when Pocahontas married John Rolfe, the uproar in British court had nothing to do with race – it was because a princess had married a commoner.
d887K TIL that in 2013 Kanye West's "Yeezus" was voted both "Most Overrated Album" and "Most Underrated Album" by Pitchfork readers.
awJRL TIL that the drink mix Tang wasn't created by or for NASA. It was introduced in 1957 but sold poorly until the U.S. space agency used it for John Glenn's 1962 Mercury mission. Tang was then marketed as what the astronauts drank, but Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin later said, "Tang sucks."
kJ8V5 TIL that John Frizzell, the composer for "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America," made mock Latin phrases for a Gregorian chant when the boys enter a church: "Scrotum agitatio ignormaus genitillus largus hemorrhoidus burnum all day long."