Today I Learned

TIL after Drew Barrymore posed nude for Playboy in 1995, her godfather Steven Spielberg sent her a note saying "cover yourself up", along with copies of her pictures altered to make it appear she was fully clothed

TIL that the rapture, the evangelical belief that Christians will physically ascend to meet Jesus in the sky, is an idea that only dates to the 1830s.

TIL some workers in Japan pay agencies to tell their employers that they are resigning

TIL about a 747 hijacking where the jet had to land in Algeria to refuel. The lead flight attendant actually had to buy 6,000 gallons of jet fuel on her personal credit card because the Algerians insisted on payment first

TIL in 2022 an 18-yr-old student, who did genealogical research as a hobby, cracked the unsolved 1964 murder of a 9-yr-old girl in Hazleton, PA. He researched for 18 months & created 50 complete family trees to find a connection to Hazleton which eventually led him to zero in on culprit James Forte

TIL Thomas Jefferson once spent $1400 (in today's dollars) just to ship a stuffed moose to France to prove that America had large animals

TIL motoring journalist Chris Harris got temporarily blacklisted from reviewing or buying Ferraris after publishing an article in which he accused the company of specially tuning their press cars to perform significantly better in magazine reviews than the production cars customers were buying.

TIL Jefferson Davis attempted to patent a steam-operated propeller invented by his slave, Ben Montgomery. Davis was denied because he was not the "true inventor." As President of the Confederacy, Davis signed a law that permitted the owner to apply to patent the invention of a slave.

The largest known human excrement was discovered in 1972 in an ancient Viking settlement in York, England.
At 20 centimetres long and 5 in width, this coprolite is approximately 1200 years old and is fossilized.

TIL that in 1975, Twentieth Century Music Corp sued a restaurant owner for copyright infringement for playing a radio broadcast of two of their songs in his establishment, arguing it constituted an unremunerated performance. It reached the Supreme Court, which sided with the restaurant owner.

TIL that Jeff Cohen, who played Chunk in The Goonies, is an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles who now represents his former co-star Ke Huy Quan, who played Data in The Goonies

TIL that from 1264 to 1827, anyone who received a Master of Arts degree from Oxford had to swear that they would never forgive Henry Symeonis. By 1608, no one knew who he was or what he had done

TIL that due to an agreement between the National Archives and Caroline Kennedy, the jacket Jackie Kennedy wore on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated cannot be displayed in public until 2103

TIL an American photographer lost and fatally stranded in Alsakan wilderness was ignored by a state trooper plane because he raised his fist which is the sign of all okay

TIL huge rogue waves were dismissed as a scientifically implausible sailors' myth by scientists until one 84ft wave hit an oil platform. The phenomenon has since been proven mathematically and simulated in a lab, also proving the existence of rogue holes in the ocean.

TIL: The father of Thomas Jefferson's enslaved concubine, Sally, was also the father to Jefferson's wife, Martha.

TIL in 2016, a man who had been stalking “iCarly” actress Miranda Cosgrove shot at a woman in a car near Cosgrove's home before lighting himself on fire and fatally shooting himself in Cosgrove's yard. Two years prior, she was granted a restraining order against a different stalker.

TIL about the Texas two-step bankruptcy, which is when a parent company spins off liabilities into a new company. The new company then declares bankruptcy to avoid litigation. An example of this is when Johnson & Johnson transferred liability for selling talc powder with asbestos to a new company.

TIL In 1999 a heat wave almost forced two nuclear power stations next to Lake Erie to shut down because the temperature of the water in the lake almost reached the 85 degree limit