› added 6 years ago

93

TIL that Jerry van Dyke, the younger brother of Dick van Dyke, was offered the lead role in Gilligan's Island but accepted a role in My Mother the Car instead. This show, about a man whose dead mother is reincarnated as a car, ended after one season and is considered among the worst shows ever made.

N7E6N TIL that workers in Cuban cigar factories in the early 1900s employed 'lectores' to read to them while they worked. The reading materials were often literary or political, ranging from socialists newspapers to Shakespearean plays - sometimes leading to clashes with anti-communist factory owners.
m1d9y TIL on January 5, 1941, 37-year-old pilot Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia, disappeared after bailing out of her plane over the River Thames, and is presumed dead. Her body was never found.
R5wE8 TIL that in 2023, Jamaican sprinter and multiple world-record holder Usain Bolt lost nearly $13m USD in a 13 year-long fraud scheme at a Kingston investment firm. The money has not been retrieved.
PPLL TIL that printers leave unique signatures on every page they print, so each piece of paper can be tracked down to the printer. This also explains why you cannot print in black and white if you have no yellow ink.
8eAWb TIL that an Elvis impersonator in Arkansas, who legally had his name changed to Elvis Presley, unsuccessfully ran for the positions of Arkansas Commissioner of State Lands in 2014, Arkansas State Senator of District 26 in 2016, and U.S. Representative of Arkansas's District 1 in 2018.