› added 6 years ago

98

TIL in WWII German command ordered encircled US troops in Bastogne to surrender, to which Gen Anthony McAuliffe replied simply: NUTS! When Col Joseph Harper delivered the message to the German commander, the commander asked what the message meant. Harper replied, "In plain English? Go to hell."

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

5YOgD TIL common baking soda will dry Super Glue (Cyanoacrylate) almost instantly and harden it so much that it can be used to repair chips in helicopter blades.
D1PEe TIL David Bowie gave permission for David Lynch to use old footage of him for the revival of Twin Peaks (2017), because he was too sick to film anything new at the time. After he watched old footage, he disliked his accent so much, he asked Lynch to dub his dialogue with an authentic Louisiana actor
0we4R TIL in 1999 Professor Bill Ditto made a simple calculator using the neurons taken out of leeches; word's first biological computer. It was aptly named the "leech-ulator".
wLZQ6 TIL that Aretha Franklin's signature song "Respect" was actually written and performed by Otis Redding two years before she first sang it. "Redding's version is a plea from a desperate man, who will give his woman anything she wants... as long as he gets his due respect".
WBW9 TIL that Melvil Dewey, creator of the Dewey Classification System, had “a persistent inability to control himself around women”. At Columbia “it was rumored that he asked for their bust sizes with their applications”; not true, but he did ask for photographs because “you cannot polish a pumpkin”.