› added 12 years ago

171

TIL that Wikipedia is about as accurate as Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Read more news.bbc.co.uk

via reddit.com

69y4J TIL that the University of Iowa’s mascot, the Hawkeye, is inspired by the character Hawkeye from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. The name also pays tribute to Chief Black Hawk, a prominent Native American leader who spent his final years in Iowa and is buried there.
PYKeg TIL that the 1974 noir film "Chinatown" was intended to be the first of a trilogy. The second, "The Two Jakes" bombed at the box office. Consequently, the third, "Cloverleaf" was never produced. However, the script was incorporated into the noir parody film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."
kJowB TIL: various English accents have developed what linguists call a "Mary–marry–merry merger", where all three words now sound the same, due to their vowels converging
j61vR TIL that on an Auschwitz concentration camp wall, a Jewish prisoner (facing indescribable abuse) carved, “If there is a god, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.”
Oojl1 TIL A West Virginia prison charges prisoners 3-5c per minute to read books on tablets despite prisoners making 4-58c per hour.