› added 5 days ago

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TIL that the Americas were named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, after German mapmakers mistakenly believed he discovered the continents.

Read more bbc.com

via reddit.com

4XrA6 TIL Newton Minow, then FCC chairman, called television a "vast wasteland" in 1961. In his "honor", Sherwood Schwartz named the ship on Gilligan's Island after him in 1964. Minow is still alive at 94.
LkEom TIL in 1992, Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash overdosed in a hotel hallway and experienced cardiac arrest for 8 minutes before being revived by paramedics and playing a show the next night. He said he "was pissed off at himself for dying".
n0wG TIL Japanese doctors kept a radiation victim alive for 83 days after his skin fell off, begging to be killed every day
xK0b TIL Before the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther confessed for hours at a time. Annoyed, the priest told him “If you’re going to confess so much, why don’t you go do something worth confessing? Kill your mother or father! Commit adultery! Quit coming in here with such flummery and fake sins.“
kG54 TIL that Digg, a social news aggregator, was extremely popular and almost sold to Google for $200M. Instead, they began to censor their own community and make arbitrary management decisions that drove the community away to newer, less-oppressive sites like Reddit