› added 9 years ago

271

TIL There’s a prison in Finland where the only thing keeping the inmates in is a yellow picket fence

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Lk9pr TIL King Henry VIII was such a big fan of codpieces (a type of flap or pouch protruding from a man's trousers) that there used to be a wooden statue of him at the Tower of London with a secret mechanism in the floor. When you stepped on the right spot, the royal codpiece would swing forth.
ZWV4 TIL that snake charming has nothing to do with the music being played but instead has to do with the instrument’s movement.
JYZZj TIL about The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). An independent, nonpartisan agency that examines how taxpayer dollars are spent and provides objective, reliable information to help the government save money and work more efficiently.
OG0ra TIL of the "Devil's Cigarette Lighter," a natural gas fire that burned for nearly 6 months in the Algerian desert. It rose between 450 ft (140m) and 800 ft (240m) high and burned over 550 million cubic feet of gas every day. It was witnessed by John Glenn while in orbital spaceflight.
R7O0j TIL After 9 months of procrastination and zero work on the project, Frank Lloyd Wright created the plans for Fallingwater in 2.5 hrs after hearing the client happened to be in town and was on his way to Frank's office.