› added 10 years ago

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TIL when Billy Dee Williams was questioned about his appearances in the Colt 45 Malt Liquor commercials, he is alleged to have said, “I drink, you drink. Hell, if marijuana was legal, I’d appear in a commercial for that, too.”

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QJb6L TIL that the Pietà sculpture of Michelangelo Buonarroti was the only work he ever signed. He only did it after hearing someone claiming the sculpture is theirs. He later regretted his outburst of pride and swore never to sign another work of his hands again.
4JnR TIL that Washington DC’s metro system is plagued by unstable funding & poor safety maintenance. The control room has 1000+ ignored alarms a day, while train operators pee on the track & one who, due to poor driver-control room relations, reportedly disabled trains mid-run on purpose.
bvZa TIL Richard Owen (who created the word Dinosaur) exploited his crippled peer Gideon Mantell, by claiming ownership and renaming his discoveries. After Mantels suicide, Owen wrote his obituary calling Mantell a mediocre Scientist. He then had Mantells spine removed, pickled, and stored.
Xp1j TIL There are hundreds of safe ride programs across the nation that you can utilize tonight (list of phone numbers and locations)
KJkE TIL that a man named Tsutomu Yamaguchi was on a business trip in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb dropped. He was wounded, but returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, where the very next day the second atomic bomb was dropped. He survived both blasts and lived to 93.