› added 8 months ago

17

TIL Edwin Drake, the first american to successfully drill for oil, was hired by the oil company because he happened to be staying at the same hotel as the oil company's owners.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

OlG1 TIL In 1838, Edgar Allen Poe wrote a novel about a shipwreck where three survivors ate the fourth survivor, a cabin boy named Richard Parker. In 1884, there was a real shipwreck, in which three survivors ate the fourth survivor, a cabin boy named Richard Parker.
78EMr TIL If a swarm of bees flies into an occupied hive in Switzerland that belongs to another person, the owner of this hive acquires the swarm without any obligation to pay compensation.
OGYxR TIL of baseball player Fred Merkle. In 1908 he made a base running mistake that ultimately cost his team the pennant. The play became known as “Merkle’s Boner”.
kO6v1 TIL about vanity sizing, which is the practice of assigning smaller sizes to clothing to flatter customers and encourage sales. For example, a Sears dress with a 32 inch (81 cm) bust was labeled a size 14 in the 1930s, a size 8 in the 1960s, and a size 0 in the 2010s.
pMeG TIL Recycling one glass jar saves enough energy to watch TV for 3 hours