› added 11 years ago

273

TIL In the late 1980’s, Paramount was considering making a Doctor Who movie with Michael Jackson as The Doctor. Their second choice? Bill Cosby.

Read more theguardian.com

via reddit.com

b9w5E TIL about a French chemist named Bertrand, who drank 5 grams of arsenic trioxide (a very poisonous substance) mixed with activated charcoal, just to demonstrate the adsorptive properties of activated charcoal and survived.
BeLb TIL politeness can kill. The “Wave of Death” is a polite gesture by a driver who waves on a jaywalker or car, indicating they’ll allow them to cross the street/intersection without checking if it’s safe for them to do so, causing an accident.
ZpaR4 TIL that Los Angeles, California's Griffith Park was originally an ostrich farm
e0Wo6 TIL the U.S. has given nuclear weapons to Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Italy but since all U.S. nukes have special protections, they are not easily armed without first getting authorization codes from the U.S.
5Y7Z8 TIL in 1971 a woman asked a judge to sterilize her “somewhat retarded” 15-year old daughter without her knowledge, which he granted that day without a hearing. She later sued him, but it was ruled he was immune because he ordered it as a judicial function, even though he ignored due process.