› added 13 years ago

163

TIL before “Billie Jean”, MTV did not air videos by black artists because they were not perceived as “rock” enough.

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Rvna TIL no one knows what Jesus looked like; “The artistic depictions down the ages have total and complete variation, which indicates that nobody did a portrait of Jesus or wrote down a description, it’s all been forgotten.”
5VayP TIL Tommy Flowers designed and built Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, partly with his own money. It was used to decode German messages in WWII, with two machines still used for British code-breaking until 1960
Z8LvG TIL shortly after its launch the Telstar I communications satellite showed the power of instant communication - a satellite broadcast of the US president claiming that the USA wouldn't devalue the dollar immediately led to the currency strengthening on global markets.
KP1J TIL that North Koreans can be sentenced to “Three Generations of Punishment”, meaning you and three generations of your family would be imprisoned
jNlJa TIL Benford's Law dictates that any number occurring in nature (such as the speed of light or the length of a river) is more likely to start with 1 than any other number. There's a 30% chance it will start with 1, and the probability of it being any number from 2 through 9 decreases exponentially.