› added 6 years ago

83

TIL that Prudence Crandall was a school teacher in Connecticut who made history in 1832 when she accepted and African American girl, Sarah Harris, into her class, making it the first integrated school house in the US.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

e0bQn TIL : That Hydro-Quebec built the biggest vertical axle wind-turbine in the world! With it's 360ft height (110m), "Éole" was producing 4MW (enough to create power for more than 800 houses). Éole is no longer in operation since 1993 (1988-1993) due to some issue with the bearing olding it's 90+ tons
D6Jv TIL the world’s oldest beer advertisement was on a Mesopotamian Stone Tablet dated approximately 4000 BC. It read “Drink Elba, the beer with the heart of a lion” and was accompanied by a “large breasted woman holding goblets of beer in each hand”
am4J TIL Tex Johnson, a Boeing test pilot, was to demonstrate the then-new 707 to a group of airline executives by doing a level fly by. Instead, he barrel-rolled the aircraft. When called in by his boss and asked what the hell he was doing, he said “Selling airplanes.”
a84EZ TIL legendary keyboardist and synthesist Rick Wakeman of Yes fame arranged and played piano in Cat Steven's version of "Morning Has Broken". Wakeman would not be paid or credited until after Stevens returned to music decades later as Yusuf Islam.
9YRdD TIL About Action Park, a theme park in New Jersey that was a literal death trap. At least 5 patrons died on the poorly constructed and engineered rides. One particularly dangerous ride was the Cannonball Loop, a waterslide with a loop that caused patrons scrapes, concussions, and lost teeth.