› added 9 years ago

71

TIL King Leonidas of Sparta was 60 years old at the Battle of Thermopylae.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

d6V7 TIL The movie “The 13th Warrior”(1999), starring Antonio Banderas and Omar Sharif, bombed and was panned so critically that Sharif temporarily retired from acting
PYa9E TIL Norway sends the UK Christmas trees every year as a symbol of gratitude for “preserving Norwegian liberty” during World War 2.
lZJN TIL the X-Files episode ‘Home’ which was about a murderous inbred family was loosely based on a story from Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography where a family introduced him to their quadruple amputee son by pulling him out from under a bed after which he “flopp[ed] around” while they sang and danced.
d85er TIL: The inspiration for Gandalf's saying in The Lord of the Rings, "You shall not pass!" could come from a French saying in WWI "Ils ne passeront pas!". JRR Tolkien was a WWI veteran and had participated in the Battle of the Somme.
O9gL TIL that the concept of the “rap battle” has existed since the 5th century, where poets would engage in “flyting,” a spoken word event where poets would insult one another in verse. The Norse god Loki is noted as having insulted other gods in verse.