› added 11 years ago

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TIL in 1917 journalist H.L. Mencken published a hoax news article stating bathtubs were popularized in the US by Pres. Millard Fillmore after he had one installed in the White House. Thirty years later, even after he admitted it was false, it was still being reprinted as fact.

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VKVB TIL as a teenager, Puccini stole organ pipes from his town’s cathedral and sold them to buy cigarettes. As church organist, he rearranged the music to avoid playing the missing notes
R7J5Q TIL American author Washington Irving lied when he said Christopher Columbus sailed the world in a bid to prove it wasn't flat. The truth is that 'Flat Earth' has not been a mainstream theory since at least 600 B.C. In the 1400s, almost everybody would have known the Earth was round.
YpPPd TIL while assisting displaced Vietnamese refuge seekers, actress Tippi Hedren's fingernails intrigued the women. She flew in her personal manicurist & recruited experts to teach them nail care. 80% of nail technicians in California are now Vietnamese—many descendants of the women Hedren helped
nblW TIL That Lennart Green, world champion close-up card magician was disqualified from the 1988 competition when the magician judges thought he must have been using stooges to shuffle the cards. He performed the same trick 3 years later, asking the judges to do the shuffling and won.
l4ZV TIL some moths have evolved a method of detecting and disturbing echolocation sounds from bats. They can confuse bats by sending false clicks back, they can tell if a bat has found them or not based on the intensity and frequency of a bat’s clicks and they can react accordingly