› added 2 years ago

127

TIL Daniel Lambert (1770- 1809), the heaviest authenticated person in history at that time, once fought a bear on the streets of Leicester and only gave up horseback hunting when his weight exceeded 560 pounds

Read more beatlyzer.com

via beatlyzer.com

XEdaP TIL William Rankin survived a (40 minute) fall through a thunderstorm cloud. Suffering immediate frostbite and mid-air internal bleeding, while being suspended aloft by updrafts, he watched lightning appear, which he described as blue blades several feet thick, and thunder that he could feel.
yVd4w TIL The Hindenburg, the largest aircraft ever built, was partially constructed out of material salvaged from R101, a British airship that had previously held the same distinction, after it was destroyed in a fatal crash in 1930
ypwl TIL that the Disney park, EPCOT, is an acronym for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow”
9jd7 TIL that Harvard professor Roger Fisher proposed implanting nuclear launch codes in a volunteer so that the President would have to kill an innocent person before firing. The Pentagon rejected the idea fearing the President would not go through with it even if it was necessary.
woLeP TIL rock star Billy Joel is half-brother to European conductor Alexander Joel. Their shared father's journey from Germany to the US and back to Europe includes a sad tale of a successful business essentially stolen by the Nazis.