› added 5 years ago

173

TIL about Jadav Payeng, "The Forest Man of India," who has planted tens of thousands of trees over the course of nearly 40 years. He has made bloom a once desiccated island that lies in the Brahamputra river, which runs through his home state of Assam.

Read more npr.org

via reddit.com

xXyg TIL that in the 1700s, “macaroni” was a slang term for a fashionable man who dressed in an outlandish and androgynous fashion. Hence the mocking verse, “…stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni.”
8aeMX TIL Pinball was banned beginning in the early 1940s until 1976 in New York City. New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia was responsible for the ban, believing that it robbed school children of their hard earned nickels and dimes.
wLRQW TIL that Herbert Hoover's last known written words were a get well message to his friend Harry Truman, six days before his death, after he heard that Truman had sustained injuries from slipping in a bathroom.
D40e TIL that the day Keith Richards was shooting Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End he was so drunk that the film’s director had to prop him up in order to shoot his scene.
gOxW TIL in the U.K. Emergency rooms are referred to as A&E (Accident & Emergency)