› added 12 years ago

250

TIL a cat purrs at the same rate as an idling diesel engine - roughly 26 cycles per second.

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nWJGo TIL the HMS Detroit 20-gun sloop was captured in 1813, too damaged to help the war it was sunk for preservation. 20 years later it was refloated and converted for commercial service. 8 years later a purchaser tried to send it over Niagara Falls where it instead broke up on a shoal.
lo1N7 TIL that the notorious Andrew Jackson, founder of the Democratic Party, was the first U.S. President to come from a poor background. All others before him were born into wealthy and influential families.
epBWn TIL the British Empire almost federalized into an Imperial Federation. Proposed as an alternative to colonialism, the idea even had the support of the then-prime minister, but lost its momentum because of the first world war.
4Xgmg TIL that at any given time in Kentucky, there are more barrels of bourbon aging (~5.3 million) than there are people (~4.5 million).
9RJm TIL As an experiment, a copy of Casablanca’s screenplay was submitted to 217 agencies under the title “Everybody Comes to Rick’s”. Out of the 85 that read it, only 8 recognized it specifically as Casablanca, and only 3 declared it as commercially viable.