› added 11 years ago

73

TIL Valdosta, GA was named after a region of Northern Italy (Valle d'Aosta).

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R7M5a TIL there's an auditory illusion named the Shepard Tone, where multiple octaves are looped in such a way that it sounds like it's a sound rising in tone for infinity.
JRYv TIL that the Vatican still blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus until 1965.
8a4VG TIL: When Lawrence of Arabia was killed in a motorcycle accident in May 1935, his doctor, Hugh Cairns, realized that his life might have been saved had Lawrence been wearing a helmet. Cairns introduced crash helmets for military dispatch riders, thereby reducing fatalities by 50%.
4WBw TIL Room 101, the torture chamber in George Orwell’s 1984, was named after a meeting room at the BBC where Orwell would have to sit through tortuously boring meetings.
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