› added 12 years ago

477

TIL when the Beatles played Canada, Ringo Starr was accompanied onstage by a bodyguard and police sharpshooters because he received death threats from anti-Semites. To which Ringo replied, “Some people decided to make an example of me, as an English Jew. The one major fault is I’m not Jewish.”

Read more beatlesbible.com

via reddit.com

xww1 TIL in 1997 Pepsi held a contest to win a life-size replica of the Simpsons house or $75,000. The contest winner chose the cash. The house, which cost $120,000 to build, was renovated to look like a normal home and re-sold
OVlY TIL an alt-rock station in Chicago played a song by a “mystery artist,” and it quickly became one of their most requested tunes. The station revealed, after heavy rotation for three weeks, that the song was “The Great Divide” by Hanson….yeah, that Hanson.
M7yxW TIL that the doctor who attended to Osceola ignored his dying wish to be buried in Florida, and removed Osceola's head after his death to put it on display in his drug store. When his children misbehaved, he would move the head to their room for the night.
v56B TIL that even with the extremes of Mt Everest & the Mariana Trench the Earth has less deviation from an idealized spheroid than a billiard ball.
e0Ga6 TIL Grant & Lee met again in 1869, 4 years after the American Civil War at the White House when Grant was President of the U.S. and Lee president of Washington University. Grant cracked a joke at Lee about railroads but Lee refused to smile. Their meeting was brief, lasting 15 minutes.