› added 6 years ago

94

TIL about a Brazilian priest who died 10 years ago after trying to break the world record of "longest flight using helium balloons". His last transmission was asking for someone to "just explain how to use his GPS"

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YpxrA TIL that Viggo Mortensen was offered the role of Aragorn in Peter Jackson's Hobbit film trilogy, but he turned it down since Aragorn never appeared in Tolkien's Hobbit.
loEMK TIL We rely on bees for roughly 1/3rd of all crop pollination
LMZp TIL that theoretically, it would take 4 light years of worth of lead to stop a neutrino.
mxe9M TIL that the city of Cloud Cuckoo Land in The LEGO Movie is likely a reference to the 414 BCE Athenian Play The Birds in which a man convinces birds to build a city in the sky
9Y4mD TIL there was once an appetite suppressing candy called Ayds, in the late 1980's due to public awareness of the aids crisis, similarities in name and the fact both could cause weight loss, sales plummeted by as much as 50%. Resulting in the eventual discontinuation of the brand.