› added 10 years ago

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TIL that the primitive bobsled was built because some tourists got bored at a winter resort. The first luge track was built by the owner of that resort to keep them from bumping into pedestrians in 1870.

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9YL4M TIL that the small suburb of Anoka, Minnesota considers itself the Halloween Capital of the World. It has hosted a safe, family friendly Halloween parade almost every year since 1920, which started as a way to curb pranking and vandalism as was common on Halloween in those days.
xVxx1 TIL a group of British schoolchildren ran their own international arms dealership during their lunch break. They bought and sold military weaponry to armies and militias around the world. This was 100% legal.
ew8g TIL Earth’s rotation is slowing at a rate of approximately 17 milliseconds a century, and the length of a day for the dinosaurs was closer to 22 hours.
p8lyb TIL Carlsberg Laboratory, owned by the Danish brewer, was where the pH scale was invented, and where the first stable commercial beer yeast was isolated (Saccharomyces pastorianus/Saccharomyces carlsbergensis), along with many other scientific innovations
kO8YB TIL of Gail Halvorsen who dropped candy to children of Berlin via parachutes during the Berlin Airlift. He was nicknamed "Uncle Wiggly Wings" & "The chocolate uncle" by those children who wrote him letters.