› added 8 years ago

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TIL Johnny Cash released a whole album called “Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian” because Cash had been convinced that his ancestry was Cherokee, even by members of the Cherokee tribe. Later he found it he was not Cherokee at all, but Scottish, English and Scots-Irish.

yBvl TIL that author J. M. Barrie (Peter Pan) founded a cricket team whose members included, among others, Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book), H. G. Wells (War of the Worlds), Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), P. G. Wodehouse (Jeeves & Wooster), and A. A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh).
n7RY TIL that Carrie Fisher snorted cocaine on the Hoth set in Empire. Also during the filming of the Blues Brothers she was often intoxicated and did so many drugs even John Belushi told her to slow down.
D1rXj TIL that before the arrival of Polynesians, New Zealand was occupied by large flightless birds called the Moa. The largest of these was the South Island Giant Moa which could reach up to nearly 12 feet tall, making them the tallest bird species in history. They only went extinct around 1445.
awVlN TIL the Rolls-Royce Merlin exhaust gases exited at 1300 mph (2100 kph) and when angled backwards produced 70 pounds-force (32 kg-f) of thrust. This increased the Spitfire's top speed by about 10 mph (16 kph).
EgrGV TIL about Ely Samuel Parker, a Tonawanda Seneca who was formally educated and served as an interpreter and tribal representative from the age of fourteen. During the Civil War he served on the staff of Ulysses S. Grant as military secretary and wrote out the official copy of the terms of surrender.