› added 9 years ago

462

TIL a person tries to jump off the George Washington Bridge every 3.5 days, and NYPD officers routinely talk people out of it.

Read more wnyc.org

via reddit.com

wL5lM TIL that before he became President, Grover Cleveland had an affair with a woman which resulted in her becoming pregnant, and in order to cover up the scandal he had her committed & her child sent to an orphanage.
b9Wg7 TIL In 2013, 19 living men in the Tyrol region of Austria were determined to be direct descendants of Ötzi the Iceman.
nWpmo TIL that a basketball player, Boban Janković, frustrated with his fifth foul, slammed his head into a padded concrete post, leaving him unable to walk for the rest of his life.
LkWDd TIL in World War II, a few engineers wanted to reinforce the (returned) fighter planes where most of the bullet holes were. Mr. Abraham Wald then said: Let's reinforce them where no bullet holes are instead - because apparently, airplanes hit in these spots did NOT return.
MeLam TIL that J.K. Rowling wrote a real person into The Goblet of Fire. The girl was named Natalie McDonald, a Harry Potter fan who was dying of leukaemia while Rowling was still writing the book. You see her character as a first-year who dons the sorting hat and is sorted into Gryffindor.