› added 3 months ago

12

TIL of the red flag act enacted in the late 19th century where every vehicle had to be led by a person on foot carrying a red flag to warn bystanders of the vehicle’s approach

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

nJD7 TIL that Godzilla is covered in “keloid scars” to evoke the gruesome marks borne by the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. After these incidents, Godzilla was conceived in Japan as a metaphor for the danger nuclear weapons represent to humanity.
bDb7 TIL that a man called Patrick Combs deposited a junk-mail cheque for $95,000 - and the bank cashed it
6EEpW TIL - A dictionary for written sounds (meow, guffaw, neener, etc.) is called an onomatopoeia.
VaA0 TIL the Chinese word for cat is Mao, so cats pretty much say their name all the time like Pokemon
evKD TIL Weird Al Yankovic had asked permission from Prince to parody his songs on numerous occasions, and has always been refused. When the two were assigned to sit in the same row at an award’s show, he got a telegram from Prince’s lawyers demanding he not make eye contact