› added 8 years ago

326

TIL the first child to be “mailed” was sent to his grandmother in 1913. The 10 ¾ pound boy from Batavia, Ohio was sent to his grandmother a mile away. The boy’s parents paid 15 cents for the stamps and insured their son for $50.

Read more postalmuseum.si.edu

via ift.tt

DaJP TIL Bill Murray once got lost in the jungles of Bali on a motorbike. He was later found putting on an impromptu show with all of the locals of a small village in attendance, even though he didn’t speak Balinese.
b9Jwa TIL Wheeling Gaunt, a slave who bought his and his family's freedom in 1845 before moving to Yellow Springs, OH. At the time of his death, he bequeathed a large portion of his land and estate to the village under the condition that each widow be given flour annually, which continues to this day
DmWg TIL in 1941 the world’s largest seed bank (created by botanist Nikolai Vavilov) was housed in Leningrad. As the Germans surrounded the city forcing mass starvation, Vavilov’s scientists refused to eat from the collection, slowly dying of hunger as they maintained 16 rooms of edible plants.
VBBvk TIL That after the ITV kid's show Rainbow was cancelled in 1991, the host Geoffrey Hayes worked as a shelf stacker in Sainsbury's and as a taxi driver. Despite trying to get into serious acting, supposedly directors couldn't disassociate him from Rainbow.
6LBw TIL: In 2000 a man tested the parachute as designed by Da Vinci. Despite never being tested before, it turned out to have a “smoother ride” than modern day parachutes.