The Danjiri are festival carts with musicians riding onboard playing drums, flute and gong. Made entirely of wood, the Danjiri have an empty weight of around 4-5 tons and are towed at speed by teams c
TIL that when New Hampshire abolished capital punishment, the law was not applied retroactively. This affected only one man, Michael Addison, who has remained on death row since 2008.
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 in 1843, Alexander Bain patented a machine that could transmit handwritten images over telegraph lines making the fax machine older than the telephone
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 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
