› added 9 years ago

148

TIL Tipu’s Tiger is an 18th-century mechanical toy created for the Indian king, Tipu. It compromised of a tiger savaging a near life-size European man who emitted a wailing sound from his mouth.The king frequently amused himself with this representation of victory over the English.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

mx1pP TIL that Percy Bysshe Shelley, famous romantic poet and husband of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, was expelled from Oxford in 1811 due to his publication and distribution of the pamphlet called "The Necessity of Atheism".
vPdBL TIL an orangutan named Fu Manchu figured out how to escape his enclosure at a zoo by picking the lock on a door. He did it repeatedly for weeks as zoo staff was stumped about how and tried every measure to prevent it only to finally catch Fu Manchu in the act using a piece of wire he kept hidden.
LkoBQ TIL the story of Isaac Newton watching an apple fall out of a tree often misses an important detail, it was a windy day. The wind blew the apple at an angle as it fell. This caused Newton to wonder if an object could fall at such an angle that it never hits the ground, aka an orbit.
e0ZjL TIL about Patsy Mink, a law school graduate who was prohibited from taking the bar exam because she was a married woman. In 1964, she became the first woman of color elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where she authored Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination in education.
6EKjm TIL The world's biggest nuclear fusion project, known as ITER, has entered its five-year assembly phase. After this is finished, the facility will be able to start generating the super-hot "plasma" required for fusion power.