Barnorama All Fun In The Barn
“TIL the wolves/dogs used to film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005) had to have CGI butts/tails because they were too happy to appear menacing.”
“TIL that figure skater Mabel Fairbanks, who was was banned from rinks as a child due to her African American and Native American ancestry, went on to coach skating greats like Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Debi Thomas, and was the first African American in the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame.”
“TIL that two buttons in WWII RAF uniform can be put together to make a mini compass which indicates towards north.”
“TIL in the Red Sea, giant moray eels have been observed hunting cooperatively with coral groupers. The grouper approaches an eel’s hiding place and shakes its head rapidly to indicate that it wants to hunt. The eel recognizes the signal and accompanies it on the hunt where they work in tandem.”
“TIL that some urban birds like finches and sparrows use cigarette butts as a form of pest control for their nests. The nicotine in the cigarettes helps keep parasites away.”
“TIL that by 400 BC, Persians had developed Yakhchal, Ancient Refrigerators capable of storing solid ice in the summer in the desert.”
“TIL that Michigan police once rounded up a group of local drug dealers by inviting them to the fake wedding of two of the dealers’ regular customers, who were really undercover police officers. The arrests got underway after the band (also undercover police officers) played “I Fought the Law”.”
“TIL that during his time as the narrator for the US version of the first four seasons of the children’s TV show Thomas the Tank Engine, George Carlin spoke his lines to a teddy bear in the booth because he was nervous about performing without an audience.”
“TIL the crawfish farming industry in Louisiana grew after rice farmers began breeding them in their rice fields. They realized that they could farm crawfish throughout the year without it affecting their rice. It also served as an extra source of income for them.”
“TIL that the Animal Planet reality series ‘River Monsters’ ended because star Jeremy Wade was able to catch essentially every exceptionally large freshwater fish species on earth, leaving no remaining content for the show.”
“TIL that smokers whose insula got damaged after a stroke were able to quit smoking easily one day after the stroke, with no relapse and urges, suggesting that this brain region might play a role in nicotine addiction.”
“TIL that during a murder trial in 1994 an English jury got drunk and consulted an Ouija board to determine the killer. This led to a retrial.”
“TIL that In 2015, that a three-story tall lamp post became so corroded by urine that it snapped and fell over, crushing a nearby car.”
“TIL Oreo has to call the white center “creme” instead of “cream” because the FDA does not allow manufacturers to use the word “cream” to describe a food that contains no cream at all.”
“TIL in 2015 an Australian woman put a bet on a horse at 100-1 and won $825, she then took a selfie with the winning bet slip, posted it to Facebook, somebody saw it and put the barcode into an automated betting machine and stole her winnings.”
“TIL that dingoes were brought to Australia by humans around 4,000 years ago, and are actually an ancient breed of domestic dog.”
“TIL Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young stole a pickup truck in order to get to Woodstock to play their sets.”
“TIL about Operation Meetinghouse – the single deadliest bombing raid in human history, even more destructive than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. On 10 March 1945 United States bombers dropped incendiaries on Tokyo. It killed more than 100,000 people and destroyed 267,171 buildings.”
“TIL that two dim stars from the Big Dipper served as an ancient eye test. If you had lived in the time of the early Romans and could see them, you would have been eligible to be an archer in the Roman army.”
“TIL: Robin Williams autopsy revealed he had about 40% loss of dopamine neurons and almost no neurons were free of Lewy bodies throughout his entire brain and brainstem from Lewy body disease (LBD).”
“TIL Wild Rodents Will Run on Mouse Wheels if You Leave Them in the Woods.”
“TIL that In 2010, a black Nigerian couple living in London gave birth to a white, blond haired & blue eyed baby that they called ‘The Miracle Baby’.”
“TIL that a “Silent Man” in the UK repeatedly gets arrested for standing on a certain road to block traffic. He never speaks a word, not even to the court or his own lawyer. Everytime he is released, he repeats the crime and remains completely silent.”
“TIL that the snow used in the Wizard of Oz was actually asbestos fibre.”
“TIL the samurai Yanagizawa Yoshisato helped his samurai clan pay off their debts by selling goldfish. He took his best goldfish breeders over to the town of Koriyama so they could use its plentiful waters for this. His clan made goldfish more available to the general public and not just the rich.”
“TIL of J. L. Hunter “Red” Rountree, who after his wife passed and seemingly with nothing left to live for decided to commit his first bank robbery at the age of 86. Red blamed banks for making him bankrupt and by the time he passed away in 2004 he had robbed 2 more banks.”
“TIL That a journalist accidentally discovered his wife was the world’s best Tetris player.”
“TIL the record for the longest name ever used was held by a German-American man. The name is so long it can’t fit in this title but was abbreviated as Hubert B. Wolfe + 666 Sr. The name has its origins in his Great-Grandfather’s sarcastic response to a law mandating German Jews take a second name.”
“TIL that in the 1990s, actor Marlon Brando would often spend time in AOL chatrooms getting into political arguments with unsuspecting strangers. His account was frequently suspended for ending arguments by telling others to “F@#k Off”.”
“TIL about Frieda Caplan, a pioneer in the world of produce who built a successful business in the 1960s by promoting items that, at the time, were relatively unheard of in the U.S. such as mangoes, shallots, and a New Zealand fruit originally called “Chinese gooseberry,” which she dubbed the kiwi.”
“TIL the 1972 Attica prison uprising in Upstate New York, in which the prisoners demanded better living conditions, ended on the 5th day when law enforcement stormed in and killed 29 prisoners and 10 hostages. Prisoners were then stripped naked and forced to crawl through the latrine and beaten.”
“TIL that actor Gary Busey once refused to perform a scene set in heaven because he said the set design looked nothing like the real heaven he visited during a near-death experience while in a coma.”
“TIL Rio de Janeiro was once the capital of Portugal. Following the conquest of Portugal by Napoleon, the Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil (1808-1821). They then established the capital of Portugal in Rio de Janeiro.”
“TIL that, on average, half of all service dogs fail their training. Due to this poor rate, South Korea experimented with cloning service dogs that had already passed their training. The resulting clones passed at rates much higher than average.”
“TIL Miranda Gibson lived on a small platform 60 metres above the ground in a 400-year-old Eucalyptus tree to protect the surrounding forest. A bush fire forced her to evacuate after 449 days but Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area was officially extended by 170,000 hectares a few months later.”
“TIL 45 years ago, ahi (tuna) were caught for fun and ground into pet food. In Japan, tuna was called neko-matagi, meaning “fish that even a cat would disdain”.”
“TIL: Sum41 named their album “Chuck” after the UN Peacekeeper who got them out of their hotel in the Congo near a warzone.”
“TIL the King of Norway’s firstborn, Princess Märtha Louise, is a self-described ‘clairvoyant’. She has started a school for communicating with angels and dead souls, and is currently dating a self-described shaman.”
“TIL that Iceland was once covered in trees until the Vikings came and cut them down to make room for sheep.”
“TIL Freshwater snails are one of the world’s most deadly animals because they transmit the organism that causes schistosomiasis (aka bilharzia), which is, in and of itself, one of the most deadly parasites on the planet! Nearly 230m people were infected in 2014 and there are~200,000 deaths annually.”
“TIL spaces between words in documents first appeared in Irish and Anglo-Saxon Bibles in the seventh century. Paleographers today identify the extinction of ‘scriptio continua’ as a critical factor in augmenting the widespread absorption of knowledge in the Pre-Modern Era.”
“TIL the modern gas container, the jerry can, was invented in 1937 Germany. In the start of WWII, the UK used leaky, flimsy tin containers called “flimsies” but soon captured jerry cans and the Allies started copying the German design.”
“TIL: For The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., Bruce Campbell auditioned by grabbing himself by the collar, then performing a forward-flip, a trick he and Raimi had taught themselves back in high school.”
“TIL that a proposed 1896 Pennsylvania law required motorists who encountered livestock to: stop their vehicle, disassemble it, and conceal the parts until the livestock were sufficiently pacified.”
“TIL that in 1429, King Charles VII of France exempted the town of Domrémy from paying taxes “forever”, after a promise to Joan of Arc. Taxes were imposed again during the French Revolution.”
Source: old.reddit.com