› added 8 years ago

109

TIL During The Battle of The Bulge, General Patton ordered a chaplain to compose a prayer for good weather that was desperately needed for an advance. The chaplain complied, the weather cleared, and Patton awarded the chaplain a bronze star on the spot.

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

QN7LM TIL that Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair. He supposedly drafted the Declaration of Independence while sitting in his own creation, making it one of the first recorded uses of a swivel chair in history.
newQo TIL that Great Britain once had a Cones Hotline for people to report rogue traffic cones. The Cones Hotline was launched in 1992 for citizens to report traffic cones on the road for no obvious reason. The policy was mocked for both being comically pointless and for being a waste of government money.
wo6oo TIL that the Six Flags theme parks are named after the six flags that flew over Texas including the confederate flag, the American flag, the Spanish flag, the Mexican flag, the French flag, and the Republic of Texas flag.
VMQ7Z TIL The window tax was a property tax based on the number of windows in a house. To avoid the tax some houses from the period can be seen to have bricked-up window-spaces . In England and Wales it was introduced in 1696 and was repealed in 1851, France and Scotland also had window taxes.
9YGlQ TIL 4 Spider-Man suits were stolen from Spider-Man back in 2002. The suits cost $50,000 USD to make and Sony offered $25,000 USD for their return. It lead to a 18 month investigation, and the suits were found in Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo. It was stolen by a security guard who worked on set.