› added 1 month ago

9

TIL in 1950 only 9 percent of American households had a television set, but by 1960 the figure had reached 90 percent.

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P1Y4L TIL John Lennon of the Beatles tried to murder his mistress May Pang in 1973 after drinking and misunderstanding something she had said. The only reason he didn't kill her was because he was restrained by another person, Harry Nilsson.
xV6mB TIL of Puputan, a Balinese mass-suicide ritual. In 1906, about 1000 Balinese people marched out and killed themselves ritualistically to avoid the humiliation of surrender to the Dutch. After the ritual concluded, the Dutch stripped the corpses of their valuables and sacked the ruins of the palace.
We4L TIL one of the Popes was a 100% accident. In the Middle Ages, cardinals would often vote for a random candidate on the first papal ballot in order to see how the other cardinals were leaning, but in 1334 this backfired when they all voted for the same person: the very surprised Pope Benedict XII.
loj1B TIL the most common foreign languages for a US President to speak have been Latin (14) and Greek (9).
p8Blb TIL Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts “can't stand snakes [and is] scared to death of the damn things”, but he still carried around a 100 pounds python and later on a king cobra with him because “there were enough zeros on [his] contract to make him forget about his fear [of snakes]”.