› added 7 years ago

71

TIL that after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the prime minister of Portugal sent a query to parishes around the country in order to objectively understand what happened. He is now regarded as a forerunner of modern seismological scientists.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

VM1P8 TIL that in the 1970s, at the height of the Troubles, Stanley Kubrick was in Ireland shooting scenes featuring red-coated British soldiers. He got a threatening phone call telling him he had 24 hours to leave Ireland. He left in 12.
9YavD TIL that all the photos of ikea products you find in their catalogs are not even real photos. They create all the furniture in a 3D program and place them in different scenes (like a kitchen). Then they render it so realistically that you can't distinguish it from a real photo. Since 2004!
jNpLR TIL that up until February 15, 1971, there were 240 Pennies in a British Pound. ????
WkRJX TIL that the north pole is actually the "magnetic south pole" and what we call the south pole is actually the "magnetic north pole". I've been living a lie my whole life.
ADlnn TIL the avant-garde band The Residents recorded an album of 40 one-minute songs, then purchased 40 one-minute advertising slots on San Francisco's most popular Top-40 radio station and had the station play each track over the course of three days