TIL about Eugene Debs, a 1920 Socialist candidate who ran for President while jailed in Federal prison for sedition, receiving 3.4% of the vote at the time. He promised to pardon himself if elected. (en.wikipedia.org)
Eugene Debs, a Socialist leader in the early 20th century, ran for President five times. His fifth and highest vote count came in the 1920 Presidential election, in which he was running while in Federal prison for sedition. He received about 3.4% of the vote at the time (which included women for the first time since the...
TIL many of the social media sites top brass come directly from the alphabet orgs (twitter.com)
CIA, NSA, FBI,…...
TIL Wikipedia is an arm of the propaganda machine for politicians and gov't agencies (web.archive.org)
You can read more about Larry’s encyclosphere here: larrysanger.org/…/the-encyclosphere-is-greater-th…
TIL during the early days of the internet, companies tried to prohibit linking to some of their sites. The linked site linked to all of them during half of 2002 (web.archive.org)
In one of the even more absurd cases: According to an AP report (cited in Slashdot), Intentia International has filed criminal charges against Reuters PLC, alleging that the news service illegally obtained an earnings report that the company had not yet released, by guessing the URL at which it had been posted on Intentia's...
TIL that Judy Garland was the mother of Liza Minelli 😱 (it.wikipedia.org)
TIL that the worst stadium disaster in history was the collapse of a wooden amphitheater in 27 AD that killed 20,000 people. (en.m.wikipedia.org)
Just came across a mention of this in the toldinstone video How Dangerous Was the Front Row of the Colosseum?.
TIL Kowloon Walled City existed and is the real world origin for many visual representations of oppressive urbanization in cyberpunk media (en.wikipedia.org)
I came across a video on Youtube discussing it (there are several), and Kowloon Walled City is just endlessly fascinating. A few notable videos I found on the subject were:...
TIL Abou thief ants that infest any nests to steal food (www.canr.msu.edu)
Thief ants are absolutely tiny ants that are named for building their nests connected to the colonies of bigger ant species. They do this to steal food.
TIL Tupac Shakur was considered for the role of Mace Windu in the Prequel Star Wars trilogy. (en.wikipedia.org)
From the Wiki: According to former Death Row Records chief engineer Rick Clifford, George Lucas was eyeing Tupac to star in his return to the “Star Wars” saga. Lucas had asked Jackson to ask Shakur to audition but due to Shakur’s untimely death the role ultimately went to Samuel L. Jackson. The character’s bald...
