› added 5 years ago

121

TIL Cary Elwes' ancestor, John Elwes, is credited as the inspiration for Charles Dickens' character, Ebenezer Scrooge

Read more telegraph.co.uk

via reddit.com

14LD TIL Finland is the world’s most stable society. It has the highest rate of literacy and the second-lowest level of corruption in the world.
Xayk TIL Due to a law in USA, importing toys resembling humans are taxed higher than those that don’t. Marvel successfully argued in court that because their X-men action figures are mutants they should be exempt from such higher tax.
nelYY TIL Though offered a scholarship to Princeton, Ralph Nader's father forced him to decline the offer on the grounds that the family was able to pay Nader's tuition and the funds should go to a student who could not afford it. Nader graduated magna cum laude in 1955.
p8Zve TIL of Tim Macartney-Snape, one of the first mountaineers to climb Everest without oxygen. Afterwards someone said to him "You didn't climb Everest. You only climbed the top part." So he went down to the beach in India and re-did the whole thing.
wol57 TIL that, in 1910, King Nicolas I of Montenegro ordered his male subjects to possess at least one "Gasser Pattern revolver", leading to these weapons becoming status symbols