› added 5 years ago

192

TIL about the Harvard computer science professor who built a distance learning empire.

Read more newyorker.com

via reddit.com

7Dpb TIL American Geochemist Clair Patterson helped reduce lead levels within the blood of Americans by approximately 80% by the late 90s, after spending decades of fighting the industrial use of lead.
KjYa TIL the Germans accidentally bombed themselves during the onset of WW2, then used propaganda to blame the French and British while threatening five-fold retaliation.
8KJa TIL Emperor I Ferdinand of Austria had 20 seizures per day, and could not speak coherently. The only intelligible sentence he ever spoke during his 13 year reign was: “I am the emperor, and I want dumplings!”
QNbWL TIL King Philip IV of Spain’s first wife was 13 years old - when he was 10. They had 10 children, but the only son surviving infancy died at 16. Desperate for an heir, Philip then married his 14 year-old niece when he was 44. They had 5 children together. He also had 30 illegitimate children.
16Bjd TIL, the US implemented the ZIP Code in 1963 to allow mail sorting methods to be faster and eventually be automated