› added 12 years ago

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TIL that when Disney first previewed the Abe Lincoln animatronic to the public, a valve ruptured during the show. This caused Lincoln to collapse and leak red hydraulic fluid, prompting the audience to believe Disney was re-creating his assassination.

90RD TIL in 1956 Paul Hogan shocked the art world by unhooking an Impressionist masterpiece from a wall in the Tate Gallery (London) and carrying it calmly out of the gallery. Despite being photographed by journalists while he was stealing it, he’s never been prosecuted.
KOXb9 TIL that all navel oranges are genetic clones of a single mutated tree discovered by a missionary in Brazil in the 1800s.
Y1gG TIL the Illuminati was an actual secret society whose goals were “to oppose superstition, prejudice, religious influence over public life and abuses of state power, and to support women’s education and gender equality.”
YLdG TIL in 1946, during a land survey of Sichuan province in China, a forester encountered a tree he’d never seen before, so took a sample. He came to find it was as yet unknown to science, only previously existing as a fossil. It came to be known as the ‘Dawn Redwood’.
gMkd8 TIL that Kailash Temple,the 8th Century Hindu Megalith was hand-chiseled from top to bottom out of a single huge stone of granite while Aurangzeb, the Mughal ruler who sought to destroy it couldn't even accomplish it in 3 years with a 1000 men and he describes the stone as "too hard to be broken".