› added 8 years ago

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TIL that Superman’s flight powers are due to the fact that him ‘leaping tall building in a single bound’ looked silly in animated form in 1940’s cartoon by Fleischer Studios. Studio asked if they can make him fly instead, Action Comics agreed and wrote that into comics.

Y5Ev TIL That during WWII, a research program tried to train pigeons to guide missiles. Pigeons would follow the image, pecking at it, which would move the screen on its pivots. The program was shutdown, with the lead researcher stating:“Our problem was no one would take us seriously.”
mx05P TIL in 1518 a "dancing plague" broke out in Strasbourg. Dozens of people started dancing for no apparent reason, some to the point of exhaustion and death. Some historians have attributed the plague to the accidental consumption of a fungus that contains a compound structurally similar to LSD.
woOW8 TIL about the Gombe Chimpanzee War, also known as the Four-Year War, which was a violent conflict between two communities of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in the Kigoma region of Tanzania between 1974 and 1978.
Y7xEA TIL that 'Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos' was taken off air in the middle of the first broadcast, when the owner of the network discovered the show and ordered "Get that shit off the air!"
j6wpQ TIL: That Golliwogs were the second most popular children's toy in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, after the teddy bear. They were banned by Nazi Germany in 1934 on the grounds that they were inappropriate toys for Aryan children.