› added 5 years ago

65

TIL The 1st ever jazz recording was offered to Freddie Keppard, but he refused: instead, that honour went to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, an all-white band, who had a $million hit "Livery Stable Blues", which came from a song Keppard had performed.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

rNBxM TIL In some states where public defenders are underfunded, people wait in jail for months because the PD needs more time to prepare. For example in Missouri, prosecutors barely move while PDs who are on their feet all day make $12k less.
pDJN TIL A homeless man was offered $100 or the chance to learn how to code by a stranger. He chose how to code and released an app.
R7mk1 TIL the days of the week come from the Norse names for the 7 Ptolemaic planets: Sun's day, Moon's day, Tiw's day, Woden's day, Thor's day, Freya's day, and Saturn's day
QJVRL TIL Häagen Dazs’s name doesn’t mean anything - its founder wanted a Danish sounding brand name, as Denmark was known for its dairy products, despite the fact that such a word does not and cannot exist within Danish’s spelling system.
v1oX8 TIL that in 1845, the founders of a new city in Oregon flipped a coin to decide if they would name it after Boston, Massachusetts or Portland, Maine. Portland won 2 out of 3 tosses and the name stuck