› added 4 months ago

19

TIL that the Champs-Élysées is not just a "busy street", but a name derived from the Greek mythological concept of the Elysian Fields; Champs= fields + Élysées=Elysian (Palace), so it is literally just the farm out the back of the Elysian Palace and the road came later.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

v1WMD TIL unlike in the movie Die Hard, the escape hatch on an elevator can't be opened from the inside; by law, it's bolted shut from the outside. It’s there so that emergency personnel can get in, not so passengers can get out. If an elevator is in trouble, the safest place to be is inside the elevator.
691JX TIL that the early Hardy Boys books were so dark and cynical in tone, that they received an official rebuke from the publisher.
yVJxJ TIL: in 2011, Finnish acoustician Unto Laine recorded the first known sounds of the Aurora Borealis.
OGABY TIL the Human Genome Project started in 1990 and by 2003, scientists had successfully documented 92% of the genome. However, it would take until 2022 before the final 8% was mapped and a full human genome was completely sequenced.
QJxke TIL that statistical analysis of 6619 generals found that Napoleon Bonaparte had a Wins Above Replacement score (a statistical measure originating from baseball which determines a player's importance to victory) that was 23 standard deviations above the average general.