› added 13 years ago

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TIL in Japan, it is so common for people to die alone undiscovered for long periods, that they have a term for it, “Kodokushi”. “Their bodies lie in places undiscovered for long periods of time, and because of this, thick, dark stains shaped like a human body are left where their bodies once lay.”

b9A8j TIL Harold Ramis was set to direct "Galaxy's Quest", with Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, or Alec Balwin in lead roles. Neither actors were available, and Ramis left the project after DreamWorks favored Tim Allen in the lead instead. Ramis later said he was impressed with Allen's performance in the film.
oB08o TIL: The Statue That Offended New York was a nickname for a realistic nude sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens that circa 1900 stood on the city's highest point. A critic said the nearby park's character changed: kids displaced by "club men...with field glasses.” (The art was later sent to a museum.)
x6EAo TIL that fabric from the original 1903 Wright Flyer has orbited the Earth, landed on the Moon, and flown on Mars.
mxJPP TIL around 2.5 billion years ago, the Oxygen Catastrophe occurred, where the first microbes producing oxygen using photosynthesis created so much free oxygen that it wiped out most organisms on the planet because they were used to living in minimal oxygenated conditions
KYew6 TIL that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World, may not have existed. The only sources referencing it come from later Greeks and Romans. Herodotus, the Greek historian who would've lived closest to its construction, makes no mention of it in his work on Babylon.