› added 6 years ago

83

TIL that a marathon is exactly 26 miles and 385 yards because that happened to be the length of the 1908 London Olympic marathon and not because it is the distance between Marathon and Athens, which is approximately 25 miles.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

dbdE TIL that Bea Arthur (Dorothy from The Golden Girls) was a truck-driving Marine in World War II, before finding fame as an actress and singer.
b4O0 TIL After JFK was assassinated, there was a brief scuffle between local and federal authorities when the President’s security detail wasn’t allowed to remove his body from the hospital. It ended when the Secret Service agents put the local officials against the wall at gunpoint.
EMa7 TIL During a slump in the minors, Mickey Mantle told his father “I don’t think I can play baseball anymore.” His father responded with “I thought I raised a man. I see I raised a coward instead. You can come back to Oklahoma and work the mines with me.” Mantle immediately broke out of his slump.
oR4YR TIL that the outer HALOS of the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky way are already touching each other. The Galactic collision is already in it's early phase
R7X98 TIL that quahogs (a common clam) are among the longest-lived marine organisms in the world and can live up to 200 years old. They don't reproduce until around 6 years old, and don't reach commercially harvestable size until about 20 years old.