› added 1 year ago

229

TIL Australia's first ever medal won at the Winter Olympics was a gold medal in Short Track Skating and the skater, Steven Bradbury, was dubbed "the accidental hero" after winning in a very bizarre sequence of his rivals colliding in all the elimination phases (quarter-finals, semi-finals and final)

Read more olympics.com.au

via reddit.com

R79V4 TIL of GRB 080319B, a extremely bright gamma ray burst/supernova that despite being 7.5 billion light years away from the Earth, was visible to the naked eye for around 30 seconds
KE4G TIL in Lebanon the President must be a Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni, and the Speaker of Parliament a Shi'a
7rpdp TIL the outrage that ensued when gold miners cut down the “Mammoth Tree” at California’s (now) Calaveras Big Trees State Park inspired the national park system over 160 years ago.
kjRg TIL that the Ancient Greeks had a word, akrasia, to describe the lack of will that prevents us from doing something that we know is good for us
nWrbo TIL that there are companies in the U.S. that will fly you in a helicopter so you can hunt feral hogs from the sky using belt-fed automatic machine guns.