TIL machine guns on old war plane were synchronized to the engine with timing gears so they can shoot through the propellers without hitting the blades
TIL playwright/composer Meredith Willson earned more from the Beatles' cover of one of his songs than he did for the hit Broadway musical it came from.
TIL that in 1959, a British expedition took a 5,700-pound elephant across the Alps to test whether Hannibalās legendary crossing with elephants was actually possible. It was.
TIL a famous book collector stole pages from rare books in the British Museum to complete his own copies, and librarians later proved it by matching wormholes, folds, and impressions on the stolen pag
TIL Steven Van Zandt co-wrote Sun City, a song protesting apartheid in South Africa. More than 40 artists participated in its recording, including Bono, Run-DMC, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan and Miles Davi
TIL that although Olympic gold medalist Floyd Patterson and his trainer Cus DāAmato wanted to pursue the boxing world heavyweight championship as early as 1954, they waited two years until the undefea
TIL in 2020 rumours circulated in France of horses and donkeys being killed and mutilated, with around 30 animals were reported mutilated. Journalistic investigations showed that it was "a collective
TIL The Batmobile Tumbler from the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy is a real, working vehicle custom built for the movies. The main difference between the real version and the movie version is the co
TIL that about half of human DNA consists of "jumping genes". parasitical code that multiplied inside our genome and do not contribute to human function or survival.
TIL "The Dark Knight Rises" was heavily inspired by Rocky III, with co-writer/director Christopher Nolan and writer David S. Goyer modeling the narrative arc around an aging, broken-down champion faci
TIL that the Daleks in Doctor Who are regarded as having been pivotal in saving the show from being cancelled. Their popularity at one point in 1964, surpassed The Beatles in the TV ratings
TIL that in 1924, The New York Times called crossword puzzles a "sinful waste of time" and refused to print them. They only relented during WWII to give stressed readers a distraction from grim war ne
TIL that in 1921, Babe Ruth hit his 139th career home run, passing Roger Connor to become baseballās all-time home run leader. Ruth kept adding to the record until retiring with 714 in 1935, and remai
TIL that in Bali, teenagers have their canine teeth filed. In traditional Balinese belief, the practice removes the animal instincts of the person and proves that the person is mature enough to marry.
TIL that in 1974, Stan Lee made an "offhand remark" wondering why Iron Man didn't have a nose. This cause the illustrators to scramble to add a nose to his helmet. A year and a half later, Stan Lee sa
TIL Ian Mckellen first day of filming in LOTR was Gandalf's arrival in The Shire. The second day was the last scene of the third film where he is saying goodbye to the Hobbits, to which he asked Peter
TIL In the middle third of the 19th century, the clippers which carried cargoes of tea from China to Britain would compete in informal races to be first ship to dock in London with the new crop of eac
TIL that the world's oldest hotel, Japan's Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, is no longer familyāowned after more than 1,300 years of continuous operation by the same lineage. In 2017 the 52āgeneration family
TIL Agatha Christie's play, The Mousetrap, has been running almost continuously in the West End since 1952. This has prevented any film adaptation from being made, and has even kept the short story it
TIL Michael Jordan donated his entire first-year salary after coming out of retirement to play for the Washington Wizards to support 9/11 relief efforts
TIL about Okawa Elementary School, a school in Ishinomaki City, Japan which was destroyed during the 2011 tsunami, leading to the deaths of 74 of its 108 students and 10 of the 11 teachers. The school
TIL an ASML machine used to make advanced chips costs about $150M, is bus-sized, has 100,000 parts and 2 km of cable, and needs 40 shipping containers, 20 trucks and 3 Boeing 747s to deliver. It creat
TIL the former director of Tekken, Katsuhiro Harada, missed out on a barbecue with fans to celebrate the addition of Leroy Smith. Due to misunderstanding the intention of fans, Harada thought the cook
TIL the Vietnam Veterans Memorial includes more than just those killed in action. The Wall also lists service members who died in Vietnam from accidents, illness, drowning, murder, animal attacks, sna
TIL, that among the reasons Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the Louisiana Purchase, is he thought Mastodons still existed and they were likely to encounter them.
TIL In order to support the 3D graphics required by the SNES 1993 Star Fox videogame, a custom RISC coprocessor was soldered into every game cartridge. The SNES' native CPU was too slow to render poly
TIL that there is a real fruit called the Black Republican Cherry. The name originated as a slur against abolitionist supporters and Republicans like Abraham Lincoln. The Black Republican cherry is a
TIL the 1985 discovery of the Titanic happened during a secret US Navy mission to find a sunken nuclear sub from the 60s. Commanding officer Robert Ballard had 12 days left over to hunt for the Titani
TIL that the personal physician to King George V purposefully hastened the King's death in part so the announcement would appear in the morning papers as opposed to the "less appropriate" evening pape
TIL a drinks vendor in Germany cheated $47,000 from a bottle recycling machine by putting a single bottle into it 177,451 times. He built a wooden tunnel and magnetic sensor to pull the bottle back ou
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 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 the company behind Disney Worldās 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 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 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 āThe Fat Controllerā in Thomas the Tank Engine is called āSir Topham Hattā in the American version, because āfatā was considered derogatory in the US but not in the UK.
TIL the Budweiser name has been disputed for a century between a Czech and an American company and only one of them can be sold under the name depending on where you are
TIL Animal rennet, one of the main ingredients used in making cheese, is gathered from the gut of baby cows, sheep, or goats and is what separates the milk they drink into liquids and solids for diges
