› added 11 years ago

104

TIL Ray Bradbury originally titled Fahrenheit 451 as “The Fireman”, but he & editors found the name boring so they called a local fire station and asked what temperature book paper burnt at. The firemen put Bradbury on hold, burnt a book, and reported that the temp it burnt at was “Fahrenheit 451”

xVYDb TIL about Dina Sanichar the true inspiration behind'The Jungle Book'. Found by some hunters in a cave in Bulanshahr, India, Dina was a feral child raised by wolves. Forced to live in a human society for 20 years: couldn't learn how to walk or talk but got addicted to smoking and died of tuberculosis
mxP7v TIL the Pyramids are so well built that when a Sultan's workers tried to destroy a small Pyramid 3000 years after its construction, they could only move 1-2 stones a day and gave up after creating only a gash after eight months
1aold TIL there's an unofficial language called Portunol (Portugese/Espanol) which is a slang Spanish-Portuguese hybrid. Spanish fans at Brazil's world cup would speak it to work through the language barrier. Brazilians apparently found it extremely offensive.
wJyJ TIL an ultralight craft, like a paper airplane, could in theory be dropped from space and land safely on Earth. There have even been discussions about releasing one from the International Space Station to see what would happen.
epPbJ TIL Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky are the sponsors of USS Enterprise (CVN-80), and are technically considered permanent members of the ships crew.