› added 4 years ago

60

TIL the Apollo program was named after the Greek god of light, music, and the Sun, by NASA manager Abe Silverstein. Silverstein chose the name at home one evening, early in 1960, because he felt "Apollo riding his chariot across the Sun was appropriate to the grand scale of the proposed program."

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

OoVwY TIL that helping people in poor neighborhoods plant flowers and spruce up empty lots can reduce crime. One experiment in Flint, MI reduced crime by over 50% in the neighborhood
8epGb TIL the Big Gulp was invented in 1976, when Coca-Cola suggested that 7-11 use 32 oz. cups, much larger than 20 oz. cups being used by McDonalds at the time. The first regional order of 500 Big Gulp cups sold out in a week, eventually forcing automakers to make cupholders bigger as popularity grew.
Ryra TIL that in 2005 Samantha Futerman played the role of a girl separated from her sister in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha. In 2013 Samantha was contacted by her own identical twin sister, Anaïs, who had discovered her on YouTube. Neither knew of each other because they had been separated at birth.
W5Ko TIL In Ancient Rome, flaming war pigs were used to counter war elephants. The siege of Megara in 266 BC was broken when Megarians doused pigs in pitch, set them alight and drove them towards the enemy’s massed war elephants. The elephants bolted in terror, killing a large number of soldiers.
LXPP TIL That many of Rodin’s most famous works, including The Thinker, are actually enlargements from a single sculptural piece, The Gates of Hell