› added 10 years ago

122

TIL a 1988 UK government ban required news stations to overdub IRA speeches with an actor speaking in a neutral tone of voice.

Read more news.bbc.co.uk

via reddit.com

oky7 TIL Stephen Hawking’s father was a medical researcher and encouraged his son to get into medicine. But Stephen turned down biology as it didn’t seem to explain things at a fundamental level. He got into mathematics which seemed highly impractical to his father.
Z8XwB TIL of the Kudirka Incident: a Soviet sailor swam from his ship and attempted to defect with the American Coast Guard. Not knowing the protocol for granting asylum, the Coast Guard eventually allowed the Soviets onto their vessel, where they arrested him and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
xVmNg TIL that wild camels used to roam British Columbia for 43 years. During the gold rush people thought it was a good idea to use camels as pack animals. Their soft feet ended out making them ill suited for the rocky terrain. They were let loose and multiple generations survived, last seen 1905.
9YjWB TIL If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can get brain a aneurysm and die.
J1R4B TIL that in Old English "deer" described any animal. As language evolved, the meaning changed and narrowed until it started to describe only one type of animal. It's a change unique to English and Scots, as "deer" (tier, djur, dyr, dier, etc.) still means animal in all other Germanic languages.