› added 9 years ago

217

TIL that in 1958 a man survived a mega-tsunami that had a run up height of 525m (1722 ft) because his fishing boat went right over it. He said he was looking down over the surrounding trees. This is the biggest tsunami on historic record by a looong way.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

l7edB TIL that a touchstone originally was a piece of slate used to test the purity of precious metal alloys
jN9lX TIL Norman Greenbaum wrote the famous song, "Spirit in The Sky" in only 15 minutes, and has been living solely on the royalties for the last 50 years.
8ZZ4 TIL Andreas Grassl, a german man found in England in 2005, remained unidentified for four months due to his refusal to speak, communicating instead through drawing and playing the piano. This mysterious story spawned media attention and speculation all across the world, dubbing him as the Piano Man
6NLm TIL that in the days after 9/11 Walmart purchased all available stock of American flags gaining a monopoly on the market.
ZBMv TIL There are approximately 3.04 TRILLION trees on Earth. More than the number of stars and planets in the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies combined.