› added 6 years ago

76

TIL Billy Joel got the idea for 'We Didn't Start The Fire' after he met a 21-year-old who said: "It's a terrible time to be 21", "Yeah, I remember when I was 21, I thought it was an awful time", "But it's different for you. You were a kid in the 50's and everybody knows nothing happened in the 50's"

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

4kveN TIL child prodigy Adragon De Mello's father planned for his son to get a Ph.D. in physics by age 12, win the Nobel Prize by age 16, and then become a Senator, a President, the head of a world government, and ultimately the chairman of an "intergalactic government".
wA6Y TIL Eisenhower may have played semi-professional baseball under the assumed name ‘Wilson’ and then lied about it so he would be eligible to play college football at West Point. If he had been caught he may have never graduated, achieved a military career, or become President.
loyxB TIL that asbestos is not banned in the United States. A proposed ban was shot down by the 5th circuit court in 1991 because the cost was between $450 and $800 million and would only save around "200 lives in a 13 year timeframe".
VMnw4 TIL: The term Blitzkrieg was mostly adopted by western journalists and never used by the Wehrmacht as an official military term. Hitler called it 'A completely idiotic word' and some senior officers even disputed the idea that it was a military concept.
j6kNX TIL nearly every TV sitcom "laugh track" was created by one guy in his garage, operating a mysterious invention