› added 6 years ago

129

TIL that when the Phrygians were without a king, an oracle at Telmessos decreed that the next man to enter the city driving an oxcart should become their king. An unsuspecting peasant farmer named Gordias drove into town on an oxcart and was immediately declared king.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

p8kw8 TIL Edgar Allen Poe wrote "William Wilson", a story where doppelgangers share a name and similar traits. In the 1980s, there were 2 switch hitter, center fielders, that shared similar traits and backgrounds, playing in the MLB. Their names were William Wilson.
pYE5e TIL that a lot of optimization algorithms are based on the observation of nature (ACO,PSO, genetic algorithms, honeybee algorithms, etc...)
EpZW TIL in The Beatles’ song “In My Life,” George Martin couldn’t play the piano as fast as the part he’d written. So, he played it an octave lower at half speed and just ran the tape back at twice the recording speed.
xV850 TIL that after Part 1 of "Who Shot Mr. Burns" aired, someone on Usenet correctly guessed the identity of Mr. Burns' killer the same night. However, the producers were unable to contact this person after Part 2 aired, because the person used a college email address that was defunct by that time.
LQQKp TIL that the term "fundamentalism" was coined in 1920, and was named after a series of 12 Evangelical protestant pamphlets called " The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth." The pamphlets argued that the Bible was the literal and inerrant word of God.