› added 10 years ago

108

TIL Aeschylus, the famous author of tragedies, died from a tortoise being dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his head for a rock suitable for shattering the turtles shell. Aeschylus stayed indoors as often as possible since he prophesied he would be killed by a falling object.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

8mmG TIL An Ethiopian Olympic runner couldn’t find a comfortable pair of shoes, so he ran the 1960 Olympic Marathon in Rome barefoot, finished first, and set a new World Record.
YplQB TIL life on earth is estimated to exist for around 4 billion years ago. This means life, as far as we know it, has been a component of our universe for roughly 29% of its timeline.
gr1W7 TIL - Ants can lay a trail of Pheromones that connect into a circle, eventually trapping the entire colony in a “death spiral” where they essentially all run themselves to death.
p8N6N TIL about Thomas Darcy, 1st Baron Darcy de Darcy, an English nobleman executed by King Henry VIII, whose wonderfully repetitive title is eclipsed only by the name of his first wife, Dousabella Tempest. (Incidentally, Henry VIII also had courtiers called Richard Rich and William Fitzwilliam.)
4k8Q6 TIL about the Novgorod Republic a medieval state, with a democratic government far in advanced of the rest of Europe, stretching from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the northern Ural Mountains in the east, from the 12th to 15th centuries.