› added 5 years ago

122

TIL Legendary screen icon Cary Grant's father put his mother in a mental institution when Grant was 9 and told him his mother had died. Grant didn't find out his mother was still alive until he was 35 when his father confessed the truth on his death bed.

gp94 TIL There is an Electric Eel at the Tennessee Aquarium that is hooked up to a computer which sends Tweets from its account every time the Eel’s discharge reaches the electricity threshold. Most of Miguel Wattson’s tweets are onomatopoetic sounds related to electricity.
6EgEw TIL Carrie Fisher revealed in her memoir, Wishful Drinking, that she once had a romantic relationship with U.S. Senator Chris Dodd. When Dodd was asked for a comment by a reporter he explained that "it was a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away."
b9g64 TIL: The quote claiming that Neil Armstrong doesn't exercise because he believes that every human has a finite number of heartbeats is false. Neil did not subscribe to its thesis and only quoted the claim to disagree with it.
neAgB TIL that the reason why there are virtually only two words for "tea" around the world ("tea" and "cha") is related to how tee is transported to the corners of the world: areas where tea is traded on land calls it "cha", where it is shipped by sea calls it "tea".
dBwZ TIL A study on military funding in 2009 showed that a billion dollars spent by the U.S. government on domestic matters created ~35%-~135% more jobs than the same amount of money spent on military contracts.