› added 11 years ago

68

TIL there was a Mafia boss who for 30 years wandered Greenwich Village in his pajamas mumbling incoherently to himself, in an elaborate act to avoid prosecution. They called him the Oddfather.

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ejQ4 TIL there’s a Mariachi band that does covers of metal songs called Metalachi!
LjZv TIL the word “mortgage” comes from French, meaning “death pledge”
lo5JA TIL that in 2013 a petition requesting that the United States Government build a Death Star reached 25,000 signatures, the threshold requiring the White House office to make a response. One part of the response was, "The Administration does not support blowing up planets."
b6RWN TIL that the Eiffel Tower was originally designed for Barcelona, but it was rejected for aesthetic reasons. The design was not popular in Paris at the time; some 300 intellectuals and artists called it an eyesore.
wnPM TIL that 19 Baboons from Paris Zoo sent to a national park in England were unable to understand English commands but were fully cognitive of French words, forcing their English keepers to learn French.