Post * VBd1G — Curious Curator

› added 1 month ago

7

TIL Charles Luckman, an architect who designed Madison Square Garden, decided to be an architect when he was working at a newsstand as a kid and asked one woman passing by what the "pretty lights" overhead were and who placed them there. She answered it was a chandelier and that an architect decides

Read more

dDvmQ TIL that in 1885 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used 300,000 pounds of explosives to annihilate Flood Rock island in New York City's East River as part of clearing Hell Gate for safer navigation. It's been described as "the largest planned explosion before testing began for the atomic bomb".

RKGl TIL during pre-Civil War America, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters. About 28 percent of free blacks owned slaves—as opposed to less than 4.8 percent of southern whites, and dramatically more than the 1.4 percent of all white Americans who owned slaves.

P1e4E Today I learned the power symbol we see on computers (a circle with a line on the top) is a combination of the number zero and one, replicating the binary state a computer can be in: on or off.

Z8mPG TIL that in 2006, some army units used Silly String to check enemy encampments for trip wires. Before entering a building, soldiers would squirt the string across the room. If it fell to the ground, it was safe. But if it hung in the air, they knew the room had trip wires.

8Opa TIL that three 17th century Qing dynasty era vases valued at 500,000 pounds were shattered at a Cambridge museum when a visitor descending a staircase tripped on his shoelace and fell into them.