TIL Play-Doh started out as a wallpaper cleaner before the head of the struggling company realized the non-toxic material made a good modelling clay for children and rebranded it.
TIL About the underground city of Derinkuyu, located in Turkey. Large enough to hold 20 000 people and containing chapels, storage rooms and stables it was re-discovered accidentally when a Turkish man was trying to expand his home and knocked down a wall leading into the tunnel complex.
TIL In the '70s UK singer Nick Lowe desperately wanted out of his record contract and so recorded an intentionally awful and ridiculous song called 'Bay City Rollers We Love You'. It was a massive hit with Roller fans who didn't realize it was a spoof song and Lowe had to continue in his contract
TIL that in 2011, an egg-sized meteorite believed to be 4.5B years old struck a home in France. The meteorite was one of 60 that have fallen in France over 400 years. The best, most coincidental part? The family’s last name was Comette.
TIL that architecture was a field of mathematics in much of the ancient world and many of the best know ancient buildings were designed by mathematicians
TIL that James Kim walked 16.2 mi enduring freezing temperatures in casual clothes in an attempt to reach the nearest town to get help for his family's stranded car before dying of hypothermia. It was the discovery of his footprints in the snow that led to his family's rescue
TIL it used to be common for woman in the US to wear extremely long metal hatpins but in 1910 hatpins longer than 9 inches were banned because woman were using them for self-defence and/or accidentally killing people with them.
TIL Daddy Long Legs Spiders used to be called Shepherd Spiders; named after French shepherds who would use stilts to travel over grasslands. Not only were locals able to get around more easily, the stilts were allegedly an extremely speedy method of transport; as fast as a horse in full trot.
TIL Laika the Space Dog did not live for many days in space, but instead died in a panic shortly after launch.
TIL about the Human Shield Action to Iraq; a group of people who traveled to Iraq to act as human shields with the aim of preventing the U.S.-led coalition forces from bombing certain locations during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.