› added 2 years ago

101

TIL that Laura Branigan's "Spanish Eddie" song is about a real person, an NYC gangster and then a city Youth Services Agency agent, who successfully organized and almost succeeded in establishing a truce between most of the city street gangs to reduce violence, and got shot while realizing the plan.

b9g64 TIL: The quote claiming that Neil Armstrong doesn't exercise because he believes that every human has a finite number of heartbeats is false. Neil did not subscribe to its thesis and only quoted the claim to disagree with it.
P1n6n TIL Michelle Philpots suffered two traumatic brain injuries in two car crashes and since then (1994) she's been unable to form new memories. Every morning her husband, who she started dating before her injury, has to convince her of their 1997 marriage using a photo album as proof.
NXmMe TIL that WordStar was once the dominant word processor, in part because of the lack of copy protection. Many books on how to use WordStar became best sellers. Their authors knew that they were really selling manuals for what might have been the world's most pirated software.
GYjB4 TIL that Sandwich is an English town, and that 'wich' literally means street, town, or dwelling. Also, the sandwich was 'created' following the Earl of Sandwich's request for beef between two slices of bread. It was previously simply known as bread and cheese.
1awK8 TIL that after her Super Bowl performance, Katy Perry’s lawyers tried (unsuccessfully) to copyright and trademark ‘Left Shark’