› added 8 years ago

249

TIL of the Harvard Computers. Edward Pickering decided to hire a team of women after his increasing frustrations with his male assistants. He declared that his maid could do a better job so he hired his maid, and subsequently a team of women whom soon discovered how to measure distances of stars.

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

PYl1O TIL the Salvation Army is a religious organization and not just a charity
wLlbM TIL that in 1888 Kentucky State Treasurer James "Honest Dick" Tate disappeared with $250,000 in state funds after years of embezzling the state's treasury. He was never heard from or seen again. His theft is what spurred the state to impose strict terms limits on state office holders.
a8LB9 TIL Karl Marx almost emigrated with his family to the Texas Hill Country in 1845 alongside a large number of German dissidents, freethinkers, and anti-slavery advocates who would come to strongly support the Union and the Republican Party.
rNaB0 TIL in 2005, a guy named Doug Heckman read the EULA before he installed some PC software. The agreement included a clause offering 'financial compensation' to licensees who actually read the license agreement. He emailed the company, referred to the clause and the company sent him a check for $1,000
QNV8E TIL that Dartmouth College founder Eleazar Wheelock named the school after William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth in an effort to gain his financial support for the new college, as Legge had funded other schools founded by Wheelock in the past. Legge refused and vocally opposed Dartmouth's founding.