› added 4 years ago

202

TIL Tarzan author E.R. Burroughs was the first author to attempt to license a fictional character across multi media platforms - books, comics, radio, movies, etc. Experts told him the various medias would compete against each other and fail. Instead it made him the wealthiest author in the US.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

MeDGa TIL: According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct rendering of speech, but more likely began as a separate and distinct symbolic system of communication, and only later merged with spoken language.
GY1j5 TIL The Spanish word Olé! is a mispronunciation of the Islamic god “ Allah”!, when dancers performed particularly well, the Islamic Moors ( who ruled over Spain) would yell “ Allah! Allah!”
yQE78 TIL Alaric, famous for sacking Rome in 410, was able to do so because he enjoyed the poetry of Claudian. Claudian had described a route through the alps into Italy in his poems, which Alaric found and was thus able to use and evade direct contact with the Roman army for 6-9 months.
OGkN6 TIL the first movie about the sinking of the Titanic premiered only 31 days after she sank, and was written by an actress who survived the sinking, who also starred in it. She later had a nervous breakdown and never acted again.
vPB6L TIL there is no scientific evidence that white people originated in the Caucasus, as the term “Caucasian” suggests. Rather, the term was created because Noah’s Ark allegedly settled there, and therefore the first humans were supposedly white.