› added 8 years ago

198

TIL an amateur radio enthusiast in the UK heard Titanic’s SOS call using his homemade radio equipment. Titanic’s radio company president was so impressed by his homemade radio that he offered the man a job, where he worked for the next 35 years.

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

6jpw TIL In 1939, the famous and notorious gangster, Al Capone donated two Japanese weeping cherry trees to the former Union Memorial Hospital in return for the excellent treatment and care he was offered and one of the trees still remains and blossoms outside the East 33rd Street entrance each spring.
rRkR1 TIL Howard Ashman co-wrote songs for Disney Renaissance films The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin while dying of complications from AIDS. Beauty’s dedication reads: “To our friend Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful.”
JYn0j TIL actress Halle Berry was in an abusive relationship with co-actor Wesley Snipes. At one point he hit her so hard she lost 80% of her hearing in one ear.
jNkZv TIL in WW2 escape compasses for the RAF were sometimes hidden by being made to look like a button (unscrewing the top revealed the small compass). When the Germans found out, they changed to a reverse thread, so trying to unscrew the button the usual way tightened it instead, keeping it hidden.
aymN TIL that our galaxy plus a few more are trapped in this thing called the local group that only makes up 0.00000000001 percent of the observable universe and because of the nature of the expanding universe, we’ll never be able to leave the local group. Even with light speed travel.