› added 8 years ago

117

TIL Marlon Brando spent part of his last years developing tension devices for drum heads, and holds several patents in his name.

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RAa9 TIL the first firecrackers originated when Chinese villagers burned green bamboo, which grows so fast that air pockets get trapped inside of it and explode with a loud bang when heated.
g87A TIL that the CIA secretly spiked the bread from a bakery in the French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit with enormous quantities of LSD as part of its cold war mind-control experiments.
4XWrJ TIL that the country with the highest annual gambling spending per capita is Australia ($1200). Afterwards come Singapore ($1100), Ireland ($600), Canada ($570), Finland ($560), Italy ($517), Hong Kong ($500), Norway ($448), Greece ($420), and Spain ($418)
6EkJl TIL that what American businessman and astronomer Percival Lowell mistakenly thought were “spokes” on the surface of Venus were actually shadows of the blood vessels in his eyes cast on his retina, his telescope essentially functioning as a giant ophthalmoscope.
69BOQ TIL Frank Sinatra had a bottle of jack daniels placed beside him in his coffin.