› added 12 years ago

123

TIL The name “sneakers” originally referred to how quiet the rubber soles were on the ground, in contrast to noisy standard hard leather soled dress shoes. Someone wearing sneakers could “sneak up” on you

R7a11 TIL The Boston Tea Party destroyed an equivalent of $1.7million of tea in today's money.
l7LP1 TIL of the Red Ghost, a legend about a demonic figure roaming Arizona in the late 1800's and once killed a woman. It turned out to be a feral camel with the decaying corpse of a man strapped on its back, likely a result of Jefferson Davis' attempt to create a camel division in the US army
ADBb7 TIL there were 2 biopics of Yves Saint Laurent with nominations at the 2015 Cesar awards (French equivalent of the Oscars), The films were titled 'Yves Saint Laurent' and 'Saint Laurent' and both actors who played the titular role were nominated for best actor.
pY4wG TIL Harvey Ball, the man who designed the popular smiley face graphic picture, never applied for a trademark for the smiley image and only earned $45 for his work. His son once said: “He was not a money-driven guy. He used to say: ‘Hey, I can only eat one steak at a time, drive one car at a time.'”
rN1Ox TIL that when Madonna's first single was released, the record label promoted her as a Black artist, down to making the cover a collage of downtown New York featuring Black people rather than a picture of her. This ended when she convinced the label to let her shoot a music video.