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TIL Nik Wallenda was the first person in over a century to cross the Niagara falls on a tightrope, which required two years of work to get a special dispensation, costed over a million dolars, and had to carry with him his passport to present it when he arrived at the Canadian side.

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Xrdr TIL Sir Richard Branson’s only attempt as a music producer was a novelty record called “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” that consisted of sheep baa-ing over a drum machine track. It reached #42 on the UK charts in 1982.
R7yga TIL That according to the 12th amendment of the US Constitution, if the president and vice president candidates on the same ticket were from the same state, they could not get any electoral college votes from their home state.
6E96X You’re in luck. For their senior project, two Cornell University computer-engineering whizzes recently built a machine that does just that. After learning in class how breathalyzers work, Robert Clain and Miguel Salas assembled a fart detector from a sensitive hydrogen sulfide monitor, a thermometer and a microphone and wrote the software that would rate the emission. A “slight perturbance in the air” near the detector sets it to work measuring the three pillars of fart quality: stench, temperature and sound. Temperature, Clain explains, is critical.
1av4D TIL FOX network refused to pick up the South Park series, saying the talking poo character (Mr. Hankey) would stain "[their] network." The series was then brought to Comedy Central, and it became the highest rated show that made the network one of the fastest-growing U.S. cable channels at the time.
R7V77 TIL the biggest infrastructure project in the U.S. ($512 BILLION), the Interstate Highway System, was built and championed by Eisenhower in 1956, because he thought it was virtually impossible to travel US roads after experiencing the German Autobahn in WW2 during his experience as General.