› added 11 years ago

502

TIL that New College in Oxford was in need of new oak beams for it’s dining hall (the old ones were infested with beetles). They soon discovered that the original builders had planted them replacements hundreds of years before.

Read more atlasobscura.com

via reddit.com

R7Roj TIL that when William the Conqueror died his funeral was delayed for several days. By the time they laid him to rest his body was too bloated from decay to fit in his tomb. They tried to force it in and he exploded.
5Y9l8 TIL that in a double-blind study, involving both new and Stradivari, expert violinists preferred new violins, voted the Strads the worst sounding and could not tell if their preferred violin was new or antique
PY1Yg TIL that Ian Anderson, the frontman for the rock band Jethro Tull, adopted the flute after realized he would never be "as good as Eric Clapton" on the electric guitar.
DmYg TIL Bill Nye and his neighbour, Arrested Development star Ed Begley Jr., are in an ongoing competition to see who can have the “lowest carbon footprint”
YpdRG TIL that, in the American West of the 1800s, up to one in four Texan cowboys was African American. The number of Mexican cowboys was even greater.