Barnorama All Fun In The Barn
“TIL that the owner of the Café de la Rotonde in Paris would allow starving artists to pay for their drinks with a painting or drawing. In the 1900s the walls of the cafe would have been casually adorned with works now considered priceless.”
“TIL that reindeer is the only mammal to change eye colour to adjust the amount of light that enters the eyes in different seasons. They have golden eyes in summer and blue in winter”
“TIL An Australian Fisherman caught a tiger shark and brought it to a local aquarium. The shark puked up a human arm in front of spectators. Investigators were able to distinguish that the arm was not bitten off by the shark,but was cut off and then eaten. The investigation led to a murder charge.”
“TIL Neil Gaiman’s Coraline almost wasn’t published, his editor said it was too scary, but was convinced after her daughter said it was fine. Years later, the daughter said she was terrified but wanted to know what happened next so she never let on”
“TIL in 1921 there were 14 million telephones in the US & Canada. On August 4th all of them were simultaneously silenced by the telephone companies for one minute. This was done as a mark of respect for the telephone inventor Alexander Graham-Bell on the day of his funeral.”
“TIL that watching a fire can lower your blood pressure”
“TIL Alan Alda met his wife at a mutual friend’s dinner party; when a rum cake accidentally fell onto the kitchen floor, they were the only two guests who did not hesitate to eat it.”
“TIL that when Nichelle Nichols read for the part of a communications officer in ‘Star Trek’, she had a copy of Robert Ruark’s ‘Uhuru’ with her. ‘Uhuru’ is Swahili for ‘freedom’, and when Gene Roddenberry heard what the word meant, he changed the character’s name to ‘Uhura’.”
“TIL the Trans-Siberian Orchestra has donated over $16,000,000 to charity since they started touring”
“TIL of Rebecca: a raccoon that had been sent to the White House to be served as the 1926 Thanksgiving dinner entrée. Coolidge instead adopted it as his pet.”
“TIL Cats domesticated themselves. They existed unchanged until the Middle Ages; and even now are genetically extremely close to their ancestors.”
“TIL for over 300 years Europeans could not grow vanilla seeds since bringing it from South America. In 1836 it was finally discovered that a bee from Mexico was the only capable pollinator of the vanilla orchid.”
“TIL Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are, once sent an original drawing to a little boy who had written to him. The boy loved the card so much that he ate it.”
“TIL there is one small area in Canada where the ranges of black bears, grizzly bears, and polar bears all overlap.”
“TIL that the second tallest mountain on Earth, K2, is much deadlier to climb that Everest. Approximately one person dies on the mountain for every four who reach the summit”
“TIL that after Lady Diana’s death two Slovakian tourists were each given a 28-day prison sentence for having taken eleven teddy bears and a number of flowers from the pile outside the palace. This was reduced to a fine of £200 each.”
“TIL that the first Paddington Bear toy was designed by Shirley and Eddie Clarkson in 1972 and given to their son Jeremy, the future presenter of Top Gear & The Grand Tour.”
“TIL Kenny G was one of the original investors in Starbucks and has made more money investing than from his music career.”
“TIL that the Milky Way got its name because the Greek goddess Hera pulled a breastfeeding Hercules off of her boob and milk sprayed across the galaxy.”
“TIL that Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the automatic machine gun, spent so much time test-firing his guns that he became completely deaf. His son Hiram Percy Maxim eventually invented the silencer, but too late to save his father’s hearing.”
“TIL McDonalds lost the ‘Big Mac’ naming rights in england after trying to sue an irish company called Supermac (that predated McDonalds) , allowing Burger King to troll them by calling their burgers things such as ‘like a big mac, but actually big'”
“TIL, that in 1838 a 14 year old boy nicknamed “The boy Jones” broke into Buckingham Palace and stole Queen Victoria’s underwear”
“TIL The man who took the first up close photo of a snowflake, Wilson A. Bentley in 1885, also started the concept “No two snowflakes are alike”. In his lifetime, he took over 5k photos of snowflakes.”
“TIL the Rat Pack were a group of entertainers who were friends in the 1950’s. When one performed in Vegas, others would often come without an official booking and perform at the first one’s show. Hotel marquees would read “Dean Martin, Maybe Frank (Sinatra), Maybe Sammy (Davis, Jr.)””
“TIL Mary Shelley published her novel “Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus” at 19 years old, its themes of birth and death reflecting the deaths of both her first infant child and sister within a short timeframe, followed by pregnancy with another child who she carried throughout the book’s writing.”
“TIL that Oskar Schindler abandoned his wife after going bankrupt and returned to Germany, leaving her in Argentina. They never saw each other again in the 20 years before his death, though they remained married. The final scene of Schindler’s List was her first time ever seeing his grave.”
“TIL that Jack Nicholson grew up believing his mother was actually his sister. His mom June was 17 years old and unmarried when she gave birth to him. Her parents agreed to raise Jack as their own child with June acting as his sister. Reporters from Time magazine revealed this to Jack in 1974.”
“TIL During WW II the US Army was aware that mail to soldiers was critical for morale, but overwhelmed with the volume and space it took to ship. So the resuscitated a British/Eastman Kodak method where every letter was photographed, and the film was shipped, then printed. It was called V Mail.”
“TIL that a nuclear worker in Japan was exposed to 17 Sieverts of radiation (twice the amount that should kill a person). He was kept alive for 83 days, suffering serious radiation burns to his body, severe organ failure, and an almost zero white blood cell count.”
“TIL that, due to gravitational time dilation, Earth’s core is about 2.5 years younger than its surface.”
“TIL all of Teddy Roosevelt’s sons were injured or died serving in world wars. Quentin was killed in aerial combat over France in WWI, Archibald was injured in WWI & WWII, Kermit committed suicide while serving as Army Intelligence in Alaska, and Ted died of a heart attack after invading Utah Beach.”
“TIL There was a romance novel about KFC, set in medieval England. It launched in 2017 for mothers day, and was called “Tender Wings of Desire”.”