› added 6 years ago

307

TIL Paul Bettany proposed to Jennifer Connelly after 9/11. The two were not dating at the time. They’ve been married since 2003.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

9YQxM TIL about Operation Yellow Ribbon - where Canada grounded 230+ planes as quickly as possible on 9/11 to keep them out of US airspace and away from potential targets. Canadians hosted thousands of passengers stranded in Canada until U.S. airspace was reopened.
ZpeYQ TIL that the famous song "Happy Birthday to You" was originally written as "Good Morning to All" in the late 1800s by Patty Hill and her sister Mildred. The melody was later adapted, and it became the go-to song for birthday celebration worldwide, despite being the most sung song in English Language
nWEPG TIL that an American Governor-General of the Philippines, Francis Burton Harrison, would later be naturalized as a Philippine citizen by act of the National Assembly of the Philippines at the request of President Manuel L. Quezon after Harrison had expressed interest in it despite not qualifying
Ywrv TIL Iceland is extremely protective of their language, instead of loaning words from other languages they repurpose old ones, telephone is ‘simi’, meaning thread, jet plane is 'thota’, meaning to zoom and the word for computer, 'tölva’ translates to number priestess or numbers witch.
ANxLn TIL in 1924 French colonists deliberately introduced an insect to Madagascar in order to kill off plants which native pastoralists used as food and animal feed - leading to a famine which killed hundreds and displaced thousands, but cleared land and made labor available for French sugar plantations