› added 2 weeks ago

4

TIL Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860 with just 39.7% of the popular vote - less than two out of five Americans voted for him.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

DQoEp TIL That Dreamworks owns the "film rights" to Martin Luther King Jr.'s quotes
a5Nb TIL That there is a program called Rigs-to-Reef that transforms old oil rigs into reefs, and that there are over 3800 oil rigs on the coasts of Texas and Louisiana.
e06Yn TIL an object known as the Utsuro-bune, meaning "hollow boat" in Japanese, containing a young woman who did not speak Japanese washed up on the shore of Japan in 1803. The woman had red hair, wore clothes of strange fabrics, and held a box she did not allow anyone else to touch.
grVlD TIL in the 1980s, parents were upset at a Seattle firm about phone bill charges after a half-hour show featuring Santa told children to hold the telephone up to the TV whereupon touch-tone sounds would dial a 1-900 number. A spokesman said this was to prevent children from dialing the wrong number.
9RwQ TIL Before Stephen King’s first novel “Carrie” was accepted for publication, he threw his draft into the trash after becoming discouraged with his progress. However, his wife retrieved the manuscript and encouraged him to finish it.