› added 9 years ago

87

TIL a monument marking where Captain James Cook was killed in Hawaii, and about 25 square feet of land around it, is owned by the United Kingdom.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

YpM1W TIL that Charlie Chaplin claimed to have slept with over 2,000 women, and his partners have described him as ‘a human sex machine’ and ‘hung like a horse’. He had a party trick where he would impersonate the orgasms of famous actresses.
lorO7 TIL in 2013 a Canadian bank robber obsessed with Taylor Swift stole a Cessna 172 from a flight school, crossed the US border and flew to Nashville undetected. The plane crashed at Nashville International Airport, killing him instantly. No one noticed the burning wreck for five hours.
jYWn TIL that there is a psychological phenomenon called the Backfire Effect. Essentially, the more you try to convince someone they are wrong using facts and figures, the more convinced they become that their preexisting beliefs are correct.
dDXRr TIL: The only king in a pack of cards without a moustache is the King of Hearts, who lost his thanks to a faulty 'reproduction of the original design'
0d70L TIL that there is a fungus that turns ants into 'zombies'! Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, also known as the 'zombie fungus', infects ants and controls their behavior, causing them to climb to high locations and bite onto a leaf before producing spores that can spread the fungus.