› added 9 years ago

222

TIL a Baltimore man in 1928 built a rocket in attempt to fly to Venus using 50 gallons of gasoline as fuel, steel pipes as engines, and several layers of sailcloth covered in varnish to make it airtight.

Read more io9.com

via reddit.com

QppE TIL in the 50’s there were so many kid dying from playing in abandoned fridges in the US, they passed the Refrigerator Safety Act. It was so severe troops of people would sometimes search out abandoned refrigerators, detaching the doors and smashing the locks.
PYXZJ TIL when Blazing Saddles was shown on TV, they took out the flatulent symphony in the famous beans scene, leaving a bunch of cowboys standing up and sitting down, like a weird, silent, Western ballet.
DDpj TIL eight of the July 20th, 1944 conspirators to assassinate Hitler were punished so severely, that they were slowly strangled with piano wire and revived multiple times only to be killed again. And all of this was filmed for Hitler to personally view at his leisure.
7DXM TIL A civilian guard was first posted at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in 1925 in part to stop families from picnicking on the flat marble slab with views of the city. A military guard was first posted in 1926.
wLaa6 TIL of the TV Listing for the Wizard of Oz: "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."