› added 11 years ago

197

TIL that Hugh Williams was not the only survivor of the three coincidental wrecks and that the wrecks weren’t all on the same day after all.

4kMAb TIL there was an early 1900s act named "Sober Sue", who's draw was she never smiled. A theater offered $1000 to any one who could make her laugh, attracting big comedians. Crowds came out to watch them try, and fail, giving them a free show. Later it came out that Sue suffered from facial paralysis.
7rdlM TIL The Guardian is so accepting of its nickname Grauniad that they have set up an internet address for that misspelling - it sends you to The Guardian's own page.
6yMl TIL that Pornhub, Brazzers, YouPorn, Mofos, Digital Playground, Redtube, Reality Kings and many many other porn sites, production studios and cam sites are all owned by a company called MindGeek, giving it a near-absolute monopoly on the way mainstream pornography is manufactured and distributed
1aX9P TIL the first attempt at a Thomas the Tank Engine TV series came as a live broadcast. The show was a disaster, with the model trains jerking around until a train derailed, and a crew member's hand visibly put it back on track. This caused so much embarrassment that the show was immediately cancelled
GY1kE TIL a woman who claimed to be abducted by aliens in 1961 later recreated a star map she remembered and a statistician concluded she had a 1 in 1000 chance of randomly guessing a valid pattern if she was making it all up. It was valid.