› added 13 years ago

821

TIL the co-creator of Tetris brutally murdered his family because he never received any money from the success of Tetris.

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vPRQR TIL On Sept 1st 1857 New York had a parade to celebrate the first transatlantic telegraph cable. The project took four years to complete and the line failed later that month. It was not until 1866 when communications reopened after the third line was laid (the second line snapped at sea).
pY7NO TIL about Leon Whiteley, a 26-year-old British man who cycled eastward from Portugal to China. 176 days in, at a teahouse in Kazakhstan, he met Noel Kegel -- an 27-year-old American man who was making a similar journey west
EKr0 TIL: The Federal Gov. owns about 50% of the land in the west, and less than 5% of the rest of the US
p8weO TIL that birds that habitually perch in trees hop, because it is not practicable to walk from twig to twig, while those that spend much of their time feeding on the ground walk.
16BG8 TIL that the only known portrait of the famous mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre is a caricature, and the only other depiction was discovered in 2005 to be a portrait of another Legendre.