› added 10 years ago

134

TIL Peter Falk lost his right eye to cancer at the age of three. He wore a glass eye in its place, which gave him his trademark squint.

Read more biography.com

via reddit.com

VMEvQ TIL that in the 1950's and 60's Americans were told that by the year 2000 the normal work week would be 20-30 hours, and people would be committing suicide from boredom.
ANLpn TIL that Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) wrote that criminals are distinguished from noncriminals by multiple physical anomalies and that these anomalies were able to predict the type of crime (theft, robbery, murder, arson)
KO7WB TIL one of the cofounders of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W., asked for whiskey on his death bed, but was denied and died 36 years sober.
gr5EW TIL - In 1853, Elizabeth Jones built a 7,690sq-ft mansion (dubbed Wyndcliffe) in affluent Rhinebeck, NY, overlooking the Hudson River. The unusually impressive house prompted wealthy neighbors to expand & remodel their own homes, to "keep up with the Joneses” - giving birth to the common saying.
awLGN TIL Up until the early 1900s, German used to be the dominant language of international science. "The story of the 20th Century is not so much the rise of English as the serial collapse of German as the up-and-coming language of scientific communication".