› added 1 year ago

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TIL that the French mass media corporation Vivendi was originally founded in 1853 as a water company by an imperial decree from Emperor Napoleon III

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via reddit.com

x6O4k TIL that during World War II, a hippo named Belle survived the Siege of Leningrad thanks to her caretaker, Yevdokia Dashina. With the city’s water cut off, Belle’s pool dried up, and Dashina carried 40 liters of water daily from the Neva River to keep the hippo alive.
GAYAE TIL - Bananas are curved because they are negatively geotropic; they curve upwards to break through the banana leaf canopy to reach sunlight!
RjE1 TIL Fresh snow absorbs sound, lowering ambient noise over a landscape because the trapped air between snowflakes attenuates vibration. That´s why it gets so quite when it snows.
VM5o0 TIL the HMS Victory, most famously commanded by Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, has been preserved as a museum ship and is also the world's oldest naval ship still in commission, though the USS Constitution is the oldest commissioned ship still afloat
oAVW TIL that after being seriously burned in her disappearing scene in Munchkinland, Margaret Hamilton (The Wicked Witch of the West) refused to do a subsequent scene requiring her to ride a smoking pipe broomstick. Her fill-in was hospitalized for eleven days with serious burns when the pipe exploded.