› added 1 year ago

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TIL windshield wipers were originally invented by Mary Anderson in 1903. They were originally intended to be used for trolley cars, but she could not get any companies to use them. Cadillac began using the invention on cars in 1922 but she did not profit from the invention as the patent had expired.

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v1jBx TIL in 1719 prisoners in Paris were offered freedom at the condition they would marry a prostitute and move to Louisiana.
XE75X TIL The star of the First Season of The Bachelorette, Trista Sutter is still married to the man she picked in the finale 15 years ago. They now have 2 kids.
XE4LX TIL Mel Gibson removed a scene from the film Hacksaw Ridge, in which Desmond Doss saved 75 Americans on a battlefield. The real Doss gave up his stretcher for another wounded man, was shot by a sniper, then crawled 300 yards to safety. Gibson felt the audience wouldn't find the scene believable.
OOKR TIL of a German Nazi interrogator who never used any physical means to obtain the information but was so successful that the US military incorporated his methods into its curriculum. Later in life he became a mosaic artist and did the Cinderella Castle mosaic at the Disney World Florida.
wLoZo The numbers tell the story: Of the 648 people killed by lightning in the U.S. from 1995 to 2008, 82 percent were male. And as much as we were hoping to uncover a biological cause—extra iron in the male cranium, perhaps, or the conductive properties of testosterone—it turns out men are... just kind of stupid. “Men take more risks in lightning storms,” says John Jensenius, a lightning safety expert with the National Weather Service.