› added 1 year ago

70

TIL in 1997 Packers player Reggie White starred in a movie with Pat Morita called Reggie's Prayer about a retired football player who never won a Super Bowl. Cameos include Brett Favre, Mike Holmgren, The Big Show, and MC Hammer. The Packers won the Super Bowl two days after the movie's release.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

9bRr TIL that in WWII the Soviets used captured Germans and fake radio messages to convince the Nazis of a large German armed group stranded behind Soviet lines. The Nazis kept sending airdrops and rescue missions, which the Soviets would promptly capture and force to participate in the illusion
LkMPV TIL about a 3000-year old Chinese tradition called Ghost Marriages, or the marriage of two people who died single. In some cases, the parents of unmarried men buy female corpses so their sons could have a wife in afterlife.
X0MVD TIL that Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg collaborated in founding the Breakthrough Starshot program, which aims to develop a proof-of-concept fleet of interstellar probes capable of reaching Alpha Centauri.
M7mXV TIL Pious III was elected Pope on 22 September 1503 and died only 26 days later. During his election, everyone was aware that he was seriously ill, but electing the neutral Pious helped the two rivaling factions in the conclave to buy just enough time to continue their negotiations and politicking
nMoo TIL James Watson 0 who in 1953 helped discover the structure of DNA - is still alive, still a scientist, and part of a project to discover the cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.