› added 5 years ago

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TIL in 1897, 3 Swedes attempted to be the first people to reach the North Pole. They travelled by hot air balloon but crashed after 65 hours. 33 years later, a ship discovered their camp, along with their dead bodies, journal, and camera. They'd survived for weeks by killing and eating polar bears.

Read more bbc.co.uk

via reddit.com

JYZM4 TIL about a swimming pool which was built in middle of Mojave desert, as an art installation, the location to which was not released to public. Users had to get the keys to the pool from MAK center in West Hollywood, who would provide the GPS coordinates to the pool.
4XQEb TIL Mike Birbiglia is a diagnosed sleepwalker who jumped through a second story window while dreaming that a missile was about to hit his hotel. Birbiglia restrains himself by sleeping in a sleeping bag and wearing mittens at night.
ANaAo TIL The seemingly nonsense phrase 'Fee-fi-fo-fum' from the Giant in Jack and the Beanstalk is likely a sentence in ancient Gaelic meaning "Behold food, good to eat, sufficient for my hunger!" The phrase is atleast several hundred years old and is referenced by Nashe and Shakespeare.
KaQ6 TIL The reason many critics say the James Joyce novel Finnegan’s Wake is nearly “unreadable” and “incomprehensible” is because it’s an attempt to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams.
e0j4E TIL that the darkest black created, an acrylic paint called "Black 3.0", was created by artists in retaliation of artist Anish Kapoor who had secured the exclusive right to use the aerospace material "Vantablack" in art projects, refusing all other artists who wanted to use it as well.