TIL Kris Tompkins, former Patagonia CEO, and Doug Tompkins, founder of The North Face, spent decades buying and restoring wilderness across Chile and Argentina. Kris later donated their land in Argent
TIL that the 70s punk band Germs original name was "Sophistifuck and the Revlon Spam Queens", but they had to shorten the name as they could not afford that many letters on a T-shirt.
TIL that in 1843, Alexander Bain patented a machine that could transmit handwritten images over telegraph lines making the fax machine older than the telephone
TIL that the iconic cat in Marlon Brando's hands in the movie "The Godfather" was just a stray cat that was wandering around the Paramount Studios lot. The director of the movie, Francis Ford Coppola,
TIL a rare golden cloth called "sea silk" was woven from the fine threads that pen shells (a type of clam) spin to anchor themselves to the sea floor, and it was so fine that a pair of knitted gloves
TIL The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was first issued in the United Kingdom on 1 May 1840 but was not valid for use until 6 May. The stam
TIL the company behind Disney World’s Tree of Life took its theme park expertise and turned it into a business disguising cell towers as trees. California is now its biggest market.
TIL that the Mr Bean movie opened opposite Starship Troopers in 1997, and its surprising success at the US Box Office and Starship Troopers' underperformance was attributed by some to underage kids bu
TIL Harry Flashman, the original school bully in fiction (from the 1857 novel Tom Brown's School Days), as an adult became the roguish and dishonourable antihero of George MacDonald Fraser's The Flash
TIL that in the 16th century, Spain began mining enormous quantities of silver from Cerro Rico at Potosí in present-day Bolivia. The flood of silver into Europe helped fuel major inflation, enormous d
TIL that after two games of the 1987 NFL season, the NFL Players association went on strike. One week of games was canceled, followed by three weeks of games played largely by replacement players. Att
TIL Christopher Lee was the only member of the Lord of the Rings cast who had actually met J.R.R. Tolkien. They crossed paths by chance in the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford. Lee, a lifelong fan who re
TIL The first book on forensic science was written in the 13th century. It included a story of how a murder was solved by telling all suspects to bring their sickles to the town square, and watching a
TIL that Thomas Paine's bones were dug up in 1819 and taken to England by radical journalist William Cobbett, who intended to give Paine a heroic reburial in his native country. It never happened. Cob
TIL that Aleister Crowley, who helped pioneer attempts on K2 and Kanchenjunga, was also an English occultist who called himself “The Beast 666,” founded his own religion, studied yoga in India, allege
TIL that the original Godzilla suit was so hot and heavy that technicians would regularly pour out cups of sweat between takes, and suit actor Haruo Nakajima lost 20 pounds of weight over the course o
TIL Leonard Matlovich, the first gay service member to purposefully out himself, was buried in the same row as J Edgar Hoover and his longtime Assistant Director. Matlovich chose it as a kind of "last
TIL that in Sweden, a man heard roaring coming from his neighbor's garden and discovered a moose stuck in an apple tree, apparently drunk after gorging on fermented apples. Firefighters had to saw off
TIL that a Polish-Jewish immigrant opened a lesbian café in Greenwich Village in 1925, was imprisoned for publishing a book called “Lesbian Love,” deported from the U.S., and later sent to Auschwitz.
TIL that “The Fat Controller” in Thomas the Tank Engine is called “Sir Topham Hatt” in the American version, because “fat” was considered derogatory in the US but not in the UK.
TIL King Philip II of Spain (1527–1598) ruled Spain, Portugal, Naples and Sicily, controlled the Netherlands and was King of England and Ireland through his marriage to Mary I. His empire also include
TIL 40,000 people showed up to a place in the middle of nowhere in Texas in 1896 to watch two trains intentionally run into each other. “The Crash at Crush,” brought in more people than inhabited Texa
