Commented

TIL South Korea has the fourth highest suicide rate, in part due to elderly isolation. (worldpopulationreview.com)

TIL that Al Capone's long lost older brother was a prohibition lawman in the Dakotas. The brothers lost contact for decades until reuniting later in Al's life. (www.grandforksherald.com)

Today I learned that a schoolteacher called Angela Ruiz Robles invented the precursor to the e-book in 1948 (blog.codeweek.eu)

TIL that in 1972 a 33-year-old Hungarian geologist attacked Michelangelo's Pietà statue in St. Peter's Basilica wielding a geologist's hammer and shouting, "I am Jesus Christ—risen from the dead". Pri (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL that in 1972 a 33-year-old Hungarian geologist attacked Michelangelo’s Pietà statue in St. Peter’s Basilica wielding a geologist’s hammer and shouting, “I am Jesus Christ—risen from the dead”. Prior to this, he had moved to Rome intending to be recognised as Christ by the Pope.

TIL that the word "silhouette" was just a guy's name (and he had nothing to do with silhouettes) (youtu.be)

Apparently he was an advocate for financial austerity, so his name became connected with cheap or discount things. A silhouette was an affordable type of portrait.

TIL: Louisiana has 5 times more Prisoners than Saudi Arabia (youtu.be)

TIL the USA has "national emergencies" still ongoing that date back to 1979 (en.m.wikipedia.org)

TIL Mitsubishi made a Jeep CJ until 1998. (en.m.wikipedia.org)

While picking up my daughter from school today, I noticed an old jeep in the parking lot, but did not think much of it until I saw the tri-spoked Mitsubishi logo above the grill and did quite the double-take. Apparently a number of foreign companies were licensed to produce them after WW2.

TIL Tarot cards were originally used as playing cards, and only came to be used for fortune telling a few hundred years later. (en.m.wikipedia.org)

TIL; in the US state of Georgia Immigrants are ok, as long as they can be exploited by business owners. (www.theatlantic.com)

Georgia prevents immigrants, causing millions of dollars of crops to rot. changes course to allow immigrants. still against immigration somehow.

As if elephants weren't already awesome, they eat xmas trees! (apnews.com)

There’s a bit of post-Christmas cheer on the menu for elephants at the Berlin Zoo: they can chomp on Christmas trees that didn’t find a home.

TIL Star Trek’s (1966) theme song originally had lyrics written by Gene Roddenberry, who wrote them solely to usurp half of the royalties from composer Alexander Courage. The lyrics never aired. (www.snopes.com)

And they were comically bad:...

TIL about Hector the Convector a thunderstorm and cloud system that forms nearly every afternoon from September to March in the Northern Territory of Australia (en.wikipedia.org)

Named by pilots during the Second World War, the recurring position of the thunderstorm made it a navigational beacon for pilots and mariners in the region. A mesoscale phenomenon, Hector is caused primarily by a collision of several sea breeze boundaries across the Tiwi Islands and is known for its consistency and intensity....

TIL of BILLBOARD LIBERATION FRONT : An artist guerrilla group that alters billboards by changing key words to radically alter the message, often to an anti-corporate message. (aussie.zone)

👉A beginners guide to brandalism...

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TIL an ant mega-colony exists across 3 continents and is thought to contain billions of ants, all of which recognise each other to be from the same colony. The largest part of the colony is in Europe (news.bbc.co.uk)

TIL that according to an FBI report, Elvis Presley believed the Beatles had led young people astray “by their filthy unkempt appearances and suggestive music” (www.theguardian.com)

TIL most Americans belived Indians ate live snakes and monkey brains after watching Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom (www.mashed.com)

TIL many female insects mate only once in their lives. Insect populations can be controlled by releasing flocks of sterile males into the wild. Females mate with them, never give birth and simply die. (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL that Duangphet Phromthep, the Captain of the Wild Boars Thai football team who were rescued from a flooded cave in 2018, took his own life in 2023 (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL It is said that not even Nicolaus Copernicus ever saw planet Mercury. The reason is that, as an inner planet (to Earth), it will never angularly move away more than 28 degrees from the Sun (www.sav.sk)

TIL that Eminem was offered the lead role in the film "Elysium" but reportedly turned it down, leading director to instead cast Matt Damon. (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL Michael Richards (Kramer) was drafted into the US army and stationed in West Germany. He used the GI Bill to get a drama degree.

Richards graduated from Thousand Oaks High School. In 1968, he appeared as a contestant on The Dating Game, but was not chosen for the date. He was drafted into the United States Army in 1970. He trained as a medic and was stationed in West Germany where he was a member of a theatrical group called The Training Road Show.[12] He...

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