› added 10 years ago

262

TIL Henry Ford decided to mass-produce his cars with controls on the left partially for the convenience for passengers exiting directly onto the curb, “especially … if there is a lady to be considered”.

Read more content.time.com

via reddit.com

VBLB4 TIL about the atlantropa, a gigantic engineering and colonisation idea that was devised by the German architect Herman Sörgel in the 1920s, and promoted by him until his death in 1952. The project was devised to contain several hydroelectric dams in key points of the Mediterranean Sea.
j6Xnv TIL Ted Cassidy, who played Lurch on The Addams family, skipped 3 grades. But due to his size he played varsity football and basketball as a freshman in high school, despite being 11-years old.
OoWpe TIL Japan is the second largest music market in the world after the US, in spite of not being a huge population. Physical sales are still huge there, with more record stores than the US.
4Xl76 TIL Steven Bradbury won an Olympic Gold Medal in speed skating because all the other competitors fell over
GYnWN TIL That pencils never actually contained lead, people just called it that cause they thought graphite was a type of lead.