› added 8 years ago

170

TIL a prospector in Oregon found a 16 ton meteorite on his neighbor’s land and dragged it almost a mile to his land to claim it as his own.

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b9r9E TIL what would happen if you were swallowed by a whale
YJj7 TIL the musicians of the Titanic were legally considered independent contractors rather than crew, so their families received no survivor benefits.
1aEKP TIL Architect Oscar Niemeyer and urbanist Lúcio Costa invented an urban plan for Brasilia and structures that would attempt to micromanage the daily activity of human life. The unabashed goal was to create the space that would birth “the new Brazilian citizen”
gM87b TIL From mid-1700s til 1970s, countries & individual cities had "ugly laws" that deemed it illegal for "any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself to public view."
VBwGZ TIL that traditional lacquer is made w urushiol sap, aka the rash-causing toxin in poison ivy & poison oak. In fact, "urushi" (as in "urushi-ol") is the Japanese for the Chinese lacquer tree (also toxic) & an English word for lacquerware. They all fall in the genus Toxicodendron, or "poison tree".