› added 2 months ago

13

TIL Kary Mullis, a Nobel Prize laureate, wrote about an encounter with a fluorescent, talking raccoon. He suggested it might have been an extraterrestrial alien.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

b9K97 TIL that the people of the Åland Islands wanted to be annexed by Sweden, but the Swedish government was preoccupied, so they sent them off to the LoN, where a Japanese-influenced delegation handed them over to Finland with a justification they hoped they could use to justify their own imperialism
GAW04 TIL that the US military was concerned about the potential backlash from Catholics if Rome was bombed during WWII.
YMPP TIL Since Discovered, Pluto has not completed its orbit around the sun. (It takes 248 years to complete its orbit)
1aMK7 TIL SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg wanted SpongeBob to be a character with a "young, boyish" attitude, drawing comedic influence from Jerry Lewis, Stan Laurel & Pee-Wee Herman
VMKg0 TIL In an epilogue at the end of the original 1931 Dracula film, Dracula breaks the fourth wall and taunts the audience, saying vampires are real and to be afraid. In a 1936 re-release, this was censored by the Hays Code, out of fear it would encourage belief in the occult.