› added 9 months ago

60

TIL: The Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona has been illegally built without a permit for 137 years.

Read more cnn.com

via reddit.com

p8RNZ TIL: The Beethoven family is not German, but Belgian. The grandfather was a talented singer and later became music master (Kapelmeister) at the Court of Bonn. His talents jumped a generation to manifest in the grandson, who had the same name as the grandfather: Ludwig van Beethoven!
wb5W TIL of Zimmerit, a putty-like coating containing sawdust which some German tanks in WWII were covered with in order to prevent magnetic mines from sticking to them.
159O TIL Prince hired Kevin Smith to make a documentary about him and then locked it away in a vault.
Ga8G TIL A homemade speedboat built in an Australian backyard has held the Water Speed Record of 511.11 km/h (317.521 mph) since 1978
kOyPE TIL about the melon drop scam, a con that targeted Japanese tourists. Scammers would buy a watermelon for a low price and then bump into an Asian tourist and charge them about $100 for the broken melon. This is due to the higher fruit prices in Japan. These days the scam involves any broken item.