› added 11 years ago

90

TIL that at the 2012 London Olympics, American athlete Manteo Mitchell broke his leg 200 meters into his 400 meter leg of the race. Despite this, he finished fast enough for his team to qualify for the finals.

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woDEY TIL about Black Monday during the Hundred Years' War, in which a sudden hailstorm killed around 1000 English soldiers and up to 6,000 horses in only half an hour. The carnage convinced the English king that the storm was God's wrath, and he sued for peace with the French the next day.
awyQL TIL: The three horizontal black lines on the side of a school bus are there for emergency responders. In an emergency where the doors and windows can't be opened and they need to cut into the bus, the lines show the positions of the floor boards, the bottom of the seats, and the top of the seats.
69En8 TIL - The City of London is a district of approx. 1sq mile that is distinct from "Greater London" and has a population of approx. 9500 people however, over 500k people are employed there.
5YPRR TIL Victorians sent "Vinegar Valentines" which contained anti-love messages, caricatures, insulting poems and cost the recipient 1 penny to read.
rNN80 TIL in 1880 Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter created a very early precursor to fiber-optic communications, the Photophone, a device allowed for the transmission of sound on a beam of light.