› added 1 year ago

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TIL about Peter Brough, a British ventriloquist with a hugely popular 1940s and 50s radio show. His radio success prompted a move to TV in 1956, which killed his career when his fans realised you could see his lips moving. A later critic wrote "Ventriloquism on the radio - I could have done that."

kYDE TIL that Theodore Roosevelt lost both his first wife and mother within 11 hours of each other, 2 days after the birth of his first daughter, Alice. It was also Valentine’s Day.
mxEwp TIL when babies first start emoting, they sometines turn away in the middle of smiling at you because they're so overwhelmed by joy that they can't handle all the emotion and have to regulate by looking somehwere else. This is known as 'Gaze Aversion' and is used to reduce their heartbeats.
bBXj TIL the Soviets space program didn’t only put the first man in space, but also the first women, space station, space rover and had the first (unmanned) soft landing on any body other than earth
Z8QWQ TIL George Michael wrote his hit single “Careless Whisper” at 17 years old out of sheer boredom while riding the bus to work. Despite its success, he was not happy with the song and in a 2009 interview with the Big Issue, he said he was “a bit puzzled why it made such an impression on people”.
Z8yPY TIL that a holocaust denial group offered $50,000 to anyone who could prove that gas chambers were used to intentionally kill people at Auschwitz. They were forced by a judge to pay that money, and an additional $40,000, to Auschwitz survivor Mel Mermelstein who provided proof of that very fact.