› added 5 years ago

85

TIL in 1983 US Interior Department secretary James Watt banned the Beach Boys from playing at the National Mall, saying the concerts encouraged drug use and attracted the wrong element. He was forced to apologize after finding Ronald Reagan was a fan.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

nWna9 TIL that Adolphe Sax, the son of instrument designers, was prone to accidents. As a kid, he fell from a 3-story height, drank acidic water he mistook for milk, swallowed a pin, fell into a frying pan, was burned in a gunpowder blast, and fell into a river. He grew up to invent the saxophone.
WkkXL TIL that Marry, Mary, Merry, Bury, Larry, Leery, Fairy, and Ferry aren't all pronounced the same in other english accents
nWrld TIL an apocryphal story states that the Roman Emperor Honorius was shocked upon the news of the 410 AD Sack of Rome. However, the emperor thought the news regarded one of his favorite pet chickens named Roma, and upon learning it was the city of Rome, the emperor breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
DQVkP TIL: The Carrington Event in 1859 cause auroras so bright and far south that Rocky Mountain miners in the US woke up and started preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning. Such an event today would be catastrophic with our dependence on electricity and electronic devices.
YVbv TIL in 1944 a sixteen-year-old black student in Columbus, Ohio, won an essay contest on the theme ‘What to Do with Hitler after the War’ by submitting the single sentence, “Put him in a black skin and let him live the rest of his life in America.”