› added 7 months ago

43

TIL,world's oldest emergency call service was started after a neighbour who wanted to report a house fire in Wimpole street telephoned the fire brigade and was so outraged at being held in a queue by the telephone exchange that he wrote a letter to the editor of The Times,which prompted an enquiry.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

yl7e TIL in 2013 a father in Tennessee was arrested for picking up his children from school on foot. The school had a policy that children can only be picked up by parents driving cars or kids can board a school bus.
w4eP TIL “Getting Someones Goat” comes from goats’ ability to calm race horses…opponents stealing the goat from the horses’ stall the night before a race would upset the horse and hurt their chances
BwAe TIL Rhesus Monkeys had their own Milgrim Experiment equivalent, and performed FAR better than humans in altruistic behavior. The majority of monkeys DID NOT shock the other monkeys, some choosing to starve for almost 2 weeks rather than to harm others.
1a6Y8 TIL actress Kate Mara is the great-granddaughter of both Tim Mara (founder of the NY Giants) and Art Rooney (founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers). Her acting contracts have a clause stating that if any of these teams make it to the Super Bowl, she will attend the game before work.
w6gY TIL that the reason it is safe from electrocution inside a car during a thunderstorm is due to an effect called Faraday’s Cage - when Electricity strikes an metal object, the electricity only travels around the outside meaning the interior is unaffected entirely.