› added 13 years ago

170

TIL airlines refuse to adopt backwards facing seats despite proven safety advantages

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b9wJE TIL Samuel L. Jackson was an usher at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral
b9Wnj TIL that the name of the company LEGO comes from the Danish phrase "leg godt", which means "play well". Interestingly, the Latin word "lego" means "I put together", but this is just a coincidence - when LEGO first started, it only made wooden toys.
lokRN TIL that the computer chips that are put into spacecraft are not state of the art, but are so old as to be obsolete. Their known reliability makes up for it.
XEBvj TIL as part of the Imperial Examination in Ming and Qing dynasty China, candidates would bring stationery, food, water, bedding and a chamber pot to be isolated with in a tiny room for 3 days and 2 nights to write essays. If any died, the bodies were simply wrapped in a mat and tossed over the wall.
j6OGM TIL that Ted Bundy worked briefly at a suicide hotline in Seattle in 1971 and met Ann Rule while volunteering there. Ann Rule later wrote The Stranger Beside Me, a true-crime book about Bundy.