› added 8 years ago

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TIL that Adidas, a German company, gave Jesse Owens free shoes to run in at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Read more blog.adidas-group.com

via reddit.com

6YbX TIL that one of the weapons America would have used in the planned invasion of Japan was Little David, a 36" (914mm) mortar used to test aerial bombs. Converted into a mobile siege gun, it fired 3650 lb (1.6k kg) shells at a range of 6 miles, and would have been the largest calibre gun ever fielded.
deYZ TIL that Robert M. Losey, the first American military casualty of WWII had two master’s degrees from Cal Tech and was described by professors as “‘perhaps the most brilliant student’ who ever attended the school”
N7y9b TIL that three suburban towns on eastern Long Island are seeing skyrocketing cancer rates. Meanwhile, breast cancer alone on all of Long Island is 13 to 18 times higher than the state average, and has been for decades.
WprA TIL ancient Babylonians did math in base 60 and not base 10, giving us 60 seconds in a minute, 360 degrees in a circle, etc.
mpny TIL that in 1962, the Tanganyika laughter epidemic caused contagious laughter in 1000 people in Tanzania, and resulted in 14 schools being shut down.