› added 6 years ago

149

TIL that when Billie Holiday would perform “Strange Fruit” at gigs, the club owner would order the waiters to stop serving, and the room would be in complete darkness except for a single spotlight on her face. It would close her act and there would be no encore.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

xVLZw TIL that the city of Ontario, Oregon during WWII allowed Japanese Americans to settle in the city at the time when much of the West Coast supported their exclusion, and helped them escape internment camps. All thanks to then-mayor Elmo Smith.
woJM6 TIl One of the main contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary was a psych patient/murder and did his research while locked up
P1aXO TIL that from 1801 to 1810 a pirate named Zheng Yi Sao was active in the South China Sea, eventually rising to lead a pirate confederacy. When she retired in 1810, she had 24 ships and 1433 pirates under her personal command. She later served as a privateer and retired to run a casino, dying at 68.
p8MbQ TIL that the Geto Boys' 1991 album We Can't Be Stopped was taken in the hospital the day after Bushwick Bill was shot in the eye. High on PCP and drunk on Everclear, he said he shot himself during a tussle with his girlfriend, but later stated he told his mother to shoot him for insurance money.
X0Br8 TIL about the Iguanodon featured on the Maidstone coat of arms, honouring the discovery of its fossilised remains in 1834 at Bensted’s Quarry, which helped reaffirm the hypothesis that such remains belonged to prehistoric animals.