› added 9 years ago

78

TIL that a large brawl in the US House of Reps shortly before the Civil War ended only when a stray punch knocked the wig off of Rep. William Barksdale. The embarrassed congressman accidentally replaced it backwards, causing both sides to erupt in spontaneous laughter.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

b6Y00 TIL the “chain fountain” effect where a chain of beads tumbling out of a jar rises up is also called the “Mould effect” after Steve Mould’s 2013 YouTube video brought widespread public attention to the phenomenon, and Cambridge academics published a paper on it .
KYOrE TIL Percy Spencer,the inventor of the microwave appliance received only $2 for his discovery
6Ea1l TIL in 1908 a meteorite over Siberia exploded with the force of a 12 megaton bomb, flattened 80 million trees, and likely killed at least three people.
OGog4 TIL that the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, is the granddaughter of a WWII Bletchley Park codebreaker.
Eg0ro TIL Jellyfish have a single opening which serves as both their mouth and their anus.