› added 4 years ago

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TIL that during WW2, the UK planned to build 'unsinkable' giant aircraft carriers with 40ft thick hulls made out of a mixture of ice and wood pulp. The project was canceled, but the scale model took three years to melt.

Read more edition.cnn.com

via reddit.com

6KxW TIL early printing presses used the letter “y” for the Middle English letter thorn (þ). “Ye” (definitive article), as in “ye olde”(pronounced “the old”), became commonplace, which contributed to the transition of “ye”(noun) to “thou” to avoid confusion, which eventually lead to “thou” to “you”.
dlMZ TIL rogue crime-lab scientist Annie Dookhan compromised as many as 40,000 cases with her mishandling of evidence and perjurious testimony; she received a 3-5 year jail sentence.
WGW4 TIL in the 1980s, Dominos Pizza had a campaign centered around “The Noid”. It was discontinued in 1989 after a mentally ill man named Kenneth Noid took Dominos Pizza workers hostage after he thought the ads were a personal attack on him.
QNMgM TIL that Smash Mouth's "All Star" was first popularized by the 1999 movie "Mystery Men" with Ben Stiller, and the song's appearance in "Shrek" 2 years later was a revival of the hit
kOnwE TIL that founders of Youtube imagined it as a dating site and they even had a slogan for it: "Tune in, Hook up"