› added 12 years ago

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TIL that 80% of the lyrics for Nirvana’s debut album were written the night before recording

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KYwnE TIL of the Battle of Tettenhall, where the Anglo-Saxons caught a Viking Raider force before the Vikings could get back to their boats and annihilated them.
Zp8LD TIL Universal Studios wanted John Landis to cast Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi in the lead roles in American Werewolf in London. Landis rejected this and went for unknown actors instead.
LxDv TIL of a Chinese general with 100 troops who had to defend a town against 150,000. He told his men to hide, flung open the gates and sat on the walls playing a lute. The opposing general, certain it was a trap, ordered a retreat
16DxO TIL that the Makapansgat pebble, a small rock estimated to be around 3,000,000 years old, may represent the earliest evidence of symbolic thinking in the early hominid species. It is believed that an early hominid carried the pebble into a cave because its natural shape resembles a face.
P19rg TIL the Supreme Court established "the reindeer rule" determining that sufficient secular elements can counterbalance religious components in a public display, meaning that municipalities include reindeer in addition to religious holiday displays to avoid violating the First Amendment.