Commented - til - kbin.life

til Don Pardo worked as announcer on SNL until his death, age 96! (en.wikipedia.org)

Dominick George "Don" Pardo Jr. (February 22, 1918 – August 18, 2014) was an American radio and television announcer whose career spanned more than seven decades. A member of the Television Hall of Fame, Pardo was noted for his 70-year tenure with NBC, working as the announcer for early incarnations of such notable shows as...

TIL the only guy in ZZ Top without a giant beard is named Frank Beard. (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL a species of monkey known as the Lesula was discovered in 2007 (though already known by locals). It has a brilliantly blue bottom. (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL Pablo Escobar was worth 25 billion at the time he was a drug lord. (www.britannica.com)

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 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....