› added 4 years ago

114

TIL the original reason why umbrella handles are curved is to make it easier for servants to hold the umbrella at an angle to shield their employer

Read more gentlemansgazette.com

via reddit.com

P1eDe TIL that Charlotte Hughes celebrated her 110th birthday by flying on Concorde - the oldest person to fly on a commercial aircraft. When the Wright Flyer first flew in 1903, she was 26 years old.
PPVL TIL that Astronomers had made a sweet discovery: simple sugar molecules floating in the gas around a star some 400 light-years away, suggesting the possibility of life on other planets.
J1PNl TIL Albert Einstein credited the writing of 18th century philosopher David Hume --who argued that universal time independent of an observer’s viewpoint doesn’t exist -- as key to helping him formulate his theory of special relativity.
Nmge TIL Any statistic along the lines of “the top X people have the same amount of wealth as the bottom Y people” is misleading due to the massive amount of people who have a negative net worth.
awZOZ TIL that composer Johann Schobert (NOT Schubert) died from eating poisonous mushrooms, after two people told him not to eat them. A doctor friend insisted that they were edible. Schobert, the doctor, his wife, and all but one of his children ate the resulting mushroom soup and died.