› added 4 years ago

177

TIL Yuri Gagarin scared farmers by landing in a spacesuit. A woman asked, "Can it be that you have come from outer space?" Gagarin said: "As a matter of fact, I have! Don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!"

Read more wikiquote.org

via reddit.com

5YlnD TIL: In 1209, a student of Oxford University apparently killed a woman and fled. In retaliation, the townspeople hanged three students. The school suspended operations and the faculty all feared the mob. Many of the facility then moved to Cambridge and founded a new university there.
lo0LN TIL the longest game of monopoly was played at a frat in Pittsburgh,lasting five days in 1961. When the bank ran out of money they wired Parker Brothers, who sent them a million $ of monopoly money by air and was delivered by armoured car.
5Yen9 TIL that while in Sharon Springs, Theodore Roosevelt was approached by a 12-year-old girl who asked if he would like to have a badger. Expecting to humor her, he agreed, and the girl came back with a 2-week-old badger. President Roosevelt named him Josiah and he became one of the presidential pets.
XEYBk TIL that almost all the people of Xanthos, an ancient Lycian city in Anatolia, committed mass suicide in two events 500 years apart to avoid capture, first by the Persians and then by the Romans
M7DgV TIL the Canadian PM's office will send a personalized certificate for milestone birthdays and anniversaries