› added 4 years ago

68

TIL that Walt Disney told his friend, famous entertainer Art Linkletter about his plans to build Disneyland and advised him to buy adjoining properties. Linkletter declined and said that he remembered his walk back to the car because it "probably cost me about a million dollars a foot"

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

R441 TIL In 1575 Native Americans, converting to Catholicism, had brought the practice of smoking into churches during the liturgy. Tobacco smoke, in their traditions, evoked the spirits, so naturally they mixed their smoke into the liturgical incense.
nkp7 TIL that in 131 AD the Jews revolted against Rome for the second time in fifty years. The Emperor Hadrian put down the revolt. He slaughtered 580,000 Jews and sold the remnants into slavery, starting a diaspora that would not be reversed for roughly 1800 years.
dd18 TIL when Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer discovered they were earning more than their costars, they gathered the other four “Friends” cast members and approached the producers as a group to demand equal pay. Aniston and Schwimmer agreed to a pay cut so the other four would be paid fairly.
8aOwb TIL: Africa has a "stonehenge" older than Stonehenge. Built "to mark the summer solstice and the arrival of the monsoons," Nabta Playa, "the oldest stone circle in the world" is among "Earth’s oldest astronomical" observatories. Over 7000 years old, it was found mostly-buried in sand in the 1970s.
jNEGN TIL that the New Orleans "Jazz Funeral" is a burial ceremony and celebration of life unique to New Orleans. After the body is buried the band begins to play up-tempo, joyful jazz numbers, crowds of "second liners" join in and begin dancing, transforming the funeral into a street festival.