Commented - TodayILearned

TIL How the CIA Infiltrated the World's Literature (www.vice.com)

The CIA developed several guises to throw money at young, burgeoning writers, creating a cultural propaganda strategy with literary outposts around the world, from Lebanon to Uganda, India to Latin America. The same agency that occasionally undermined democracies for the sake of fighting Communism also launched the Congress for...

TIL that Sigourney Weaver only earned $35,000 for Alien (1979) but got $1,000,000 and a share of the profits for Aliens (1986) (www.joe.ie)

TIL that there were 26 families of passengers on the Mayflower that are known to have left descendants; it is estimated that over 30 million people can trace their ancestry back to those 26 families on the Mayflower. (www.aop.com)

10 Things You Might Not Know about the Mayflower

TIL of the Yuen Long attack, where hundreds of suspected Triad members, in order to "counter-protest", took to the streets, beating people indiscriminately with metal poles and wooden canes. (en.m.wikipedia.org)

I've been reading into the topic of the 2019-2020 HK protests, and I find this really familiar with the recent reddit protests. Both started with a not well taken change, both started peacefully, but were surrounded by controversy on both sides. There were also the change supporters, who eventually won when the higher power came...

TIL: Cookies aren't even an accepted RFC, they've technically been a proposal for 11 years, despite universal adoption (datatracker.ietf.org)

Who'd have thought.

TIL that a 2019 Union College study found that joining a fraternity in college lowered a student’s GPA by 0.25 points, but also increased their future income by 36%. (papers.ssrn.com)

We exploit changes in the residential and social environment on campus to identify the economic and academic consequences of fraternity membership at a small No

TIL Princess Diana didn’t initially die at the scene of her car accident, but 5 hours later due to a tear in her heart’s pulmonary vein. She would’ve had 80% chance of survival if she had been wearing her seat belt. (en.wikipedia.org)

During the early hours of 31 August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died from injuries sustained earlier that night in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris, France. Diana's partner, Dodi Fayed, and the driver of the Mercedes-Benz W140, Henri Paul, also died upon impact. Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was...

TIL after being scolded by a woman who felt that his shoes were too expensive for kids, Shaq forwent a $40 million deal with Reebok & signed one with Walmart. Over 400 million pairs were sold. (sports.yahoo.com)

While on the Full Send podcast yesterday, legendary NBA player Shaquille O’Neal revealed how he walked away from a massive $40 million dollar deal with Reebook, Footwear News reports. On the program he recalled a moment when he was confronted by a woman who scolded him for selling his signature Rebook shoes at a price […]