› added 6 years ago

163

Today I Learned that Daylight Savings Time was first proposed by a man who, as he studied bugs after his shift-work job, wanted more daylight after work.

Zpl6Y TIL that Canadians can request a flag that was used on Parliament Hill. Despite flags being changed daily or weekly, depending on their placement, the high demand means the current wait time is over 100 years.
mrdo TIL that in 1867, when a San Francisco policeman wanted to involuntarily commit an insane but harmless man who declared himself emperor, the police chief refused, saying “that he had shed no blood; robbed no one; and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in that line.”
kDa4 TIL of the Taxil Hoax, where a Frenchman spent 12 years as a Roman Catholic writing anti-Masonic accounts, only to reveal it was a prank on the Church. As he said “…I thought I would kill myself laughing at some of the things proposed, but everything went; there is no limit to human stupidity”
0dbRy TIL that a Persian King named Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar ordered two servants to be executed for being too loud. But since it was a holy day, he delayed the execution by a day and made the servants return to their duties. The servants murdered the king in his sleep that night.
Oo5E4 TIL that Prince Philip was not allowed to invite his three sisters to his wedding to Princess (now Queen) Elizabeth in 1947, because they were all married to German noblemen, and this would have been considered inappropriate in postwar Britain.