› added 6 years ago

536

TIL that at some point in 1847, the chief executioner of France informed the government that he was unable to carry out that day’s execution because he’d pawned the guillotine to pay off a debt and lacked the funds to buy it back

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VJgD TIL that a person using homemade equipment recorded the Apollo astronauts speaking from the moon during the first landings. He had hoped to catch NASA out but was disappointed to find that the live TV coverage matched his own recordings.
R5ZV6 TIL Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't allowed to dub his own role in Terminator in German, as his accent is very rural by German/Austrian standards and it would be too ridiculous to have a death machine from the future come back in time and sound like a hillbilly.
0dg41 TIL That Woody Harrelsons father was a hitman who was responsible for killing a federal judge. This judge was also the first federal judge to be killed in the 20th century. The previous was in 1867.
1aNZd TIL the way Americans speak pre-dates the way English speak. This is because "rhotic speech" spoken in America originally came from England, later the wealthy in order to be different adopted a soft "r", “win-tuh” instead of “win-terr”. It was "posh" to sound like that so everyone else copied them.
690em TIL that a professional grave robber in Cinncinati, Ohio who routinely sold corpses he had dug up to local medical schools once deliberately sold the body of someone who had died of smallpox to a school in order to infect medical students there who had played a trick on him.