› added 9 years ago

454

TIL a giant Wham-O SUPERBALL, made as a promotional item, accidentally fell out of a 23rd story window, bounced 15 stories in the air and destroyed a parked sports car by landing on it.

Read more wham-o.com

via reddit.com

eJWL TIL one of mathematician John von Neumann’s lecturers said “Johnny was the only student I was ever afraid of. If in the course of a lecture I stated an unsolved problem, the chances were he’d come to me at the end of the lecture with the complete solution scribbled on a slip of paper.”
Me0KV TIL about Zakynthos, a Greek island that hid it's Jewish residents who otherwise would have went to Auschwitz. It is Europe's only complete surviving Jewish community during the Holocaust.
wLBDW TIL of Nedelin catastrophe. it was a launchpad accident that occurred on 24 October 1960 at Baikonur test range. explosion occurred when the second stage engine ignited accidentally, killing an unknown number (54-300) of personnel. the incident was covered up for 29 years, only to recognized in '89.
bxPE TIL Patrick Stewart was initially considered for the role of Data in Star Trek the Next Generation. Roddenberry did not want to cast Stewart as Picard, since he had envisioned an actor who was “masculine, virile, and had a lot of hair”.
l7Ljr TIL TV remotes are equipped with dedicated color buttons—commonly red, green, yellow, and blue because of Teletext