› added 7 years ago

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TIL that critics complained that Daler Mehndi’s music was only popular due to his videos that featured beautiful women dancing. Mehndi’s response was to create a video that featured only himself. The music video was the first made in India using greenscreen technology.

yQZel TIL that Aeschylus, one of three great Athenian tragedians, was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that mistook his bald head for a rock suitable for shattering a reptile shell. Pliny adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avert a prophecy that he'd be killed by a falling object.
GYBoj TIL that a week after Jim Croce died at 30 in a plane crash, his widow received a letter from him promising to stop performing, get a master's degree, and write short stories and movie scripts. It ended "it's the first sixty years that count and I've got 30 left."
nejpG TIL four-legged herbivores such as cows and horses have "stay apparatus" in their legs -- tendons and ligaments that allow them to remain standing with minimal muscular effort. However, while this allows them to doze while standing, they can enter REM sleep and dream only while lying down.
XKKQ TIL that a new radio telescope being built in Australia and South Africa will generate so much data about space that it will exceed global internet traffic by a large margin. An exabyte per day of raw data, which could be compressed to around 10 petabytes.
9DxX TIL Vending machines kill more people per year than sharks. Vending machines kill an average of 13 people a year, sharks 5.