› added 4 years ago

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TIL That King James (of the King James Bible) was recorded to have homosexual relationships.

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via reddit.com

6MB7 TIL that no one, including an expert Belgian botanist, could find a method of pollination of vanilla to make it viable for cultivation outside of South America… until a 12-year-old slave named Edmond Albius discovered it could be hand-pollinated. This led to the global cultivation of the plant.
wrX8 TIL when the Beatles wrote the song “With a Little Help from My Friends”, the first line ended with ‘What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would You Throw Ripe Tomatoes at Me?’, but Ringo changed it so that fans would not throw tomatoes at him should he perform it live.
EgpEP TIL that the ‘Age of Piracy’ only lasted around 80 years. It started in 1648 after the Treaty of Westphalia pushed European powers to hire privateers, and declined between 1714 and 1723 when the War of Spanish succession ended, Nassau was retaken, and every famous pirate had been killed or captured.
XxWk TIL that Google will award $30M to the first privately funded teams to successfully 1) land a robot on the Moon, 2) navigate it for more than 500m on its surface, and 3) transmit back high-def videos and images of the feat. Countries like Brazil, Chile, India, Hungary have joined the competition.
WkDYX TIL about NUFORC, the National UFO Reporting Center, which receives now hundreds of reported sightings each month. Here’s an interesting one I found from 1955: