› added 1 year ago

58

TIL that Cavalese, Italy had two major Cable Car disasters 22 years apart (1976, 1998) with only a single survivor between them. Both times, a person who had a variant of the family name Schweizer was implicated as having caused the accident through negligence.

mxg0O TIL Rosetta Stone was discovered during the Egyptian campaign by Napoleon Bonaparte's French forces in 1799. It became the essential key to the modern understanding of ancient Egyptian literature and civilisation
WkQrL TIL in apartheid South Africa a "Pencil Test" determined if an ambiguous looking person was white, black or coloured. If the pencil passed through their hair with ease, they "passed", but if it didn't, it suggested Afro-textured hair and they'd be forced to live apart from the white community.
QNDGp TIL - In Marseille, France - there is an extremely violent drug gang called Yoda. One of their symbols is Yoda from Star Wars smoking a joint.
rRDEw TIL: of the Merryhill museum of art in middle of nowhere Washington State, originally intended as a country mansion for entrepreneur Sam Hill, In 1917 he was convinced by a friend to turn it into “a museum for the public good, and for the betterment of French art in the far Northwest of America.”
p8dlZ TIL The great grandson of China's first President didn't learn about him until he was 17 when he had to do a term paper and found over 1,600 books on Sun Yat-Sen, "The Father of Modern China". His grandparents and parents never told him about politics so he could grow up as a normal child