› added 3 years ago

110

TIL that Vivendi (the media conglomerate that owns Universal Music Group, Dailymotion, Gameloft, etc.) was founded by decree of emperor Napoleon III in 1853 as a water supply company.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

KO6JB TIL People leave pennies on John Wilkes Booth’s grave to give Lincoln the last word
YW6G TIL Bubble wrap was originally designed to be a three-dimensional wall paper.
a8AO9 TIL rusty objects don’t give you tetanus, but a bacteria found in soil. That’s why we associate a rusty nail found in soil with tetanus. A random rusty chair is just a random rusty chair
p8Zlp TIL When two subatomic particles called “bottom quarks” fuse, they release more than 7x the energy of individual fusion reactions in hydrogen bombs. The physicists who made this discovery kept it a secret until they were certain the discovery cannot be weaponized.
Y7ZK7 TIL Greenland was so remote that no-one realised the Viking settlements had died out until 1721, when missionaries visited the island expecting to find Norsemen who may have relapsed to paganism and instead found ruins.