› added 4 years ago

403

TIL that Miserere Mei, Deus, a piece of choral music, was a closely guarded secret by the Catholic Church until Mozart went to see it and copied it down off of memory. Instead of being excommunicated like he should have been, Mozart received the Order of the Golden Spur, and it was published.

Read more youtube.com

via reddit.com

YpjDA TIL: In 2005, a 12-year-old Ethiopian girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who had chased off her captors.
eWdJ TIL that the Messerschmitt Bf-109, the workhorse fighter of the German Luftwaffe during WWII, first flew with a British Rolls-Royce engine, because the German engine was not ready in time for the prototype.
9wLGG TIL The Mpemba effect is the name given to the observation that a liquid (typically water) which is initially hot can freeze faster than the same liquid which begins cold, under otherwise similar conditions.
JY1n8 It’s never happened, and NASA feels confident that it never will. For one thing, astronauts generally don’t float free. Outside the ISS, they’re always attached to the spacecraft with a braided steel tether, which has a tensile strength of 1,100 pounds. If it’s a two-person spacewalk, oftentimes the astronauts are also hooked to each other.
VMv90 TIL that in 1950 Venezuela was the 4th richest country in the world.