TIL that Pres. George HW Bush vomited on the lap of Japanese PM Kiichi Miyazawa during a 1992 state banquet. The incident caused a wave of late night TV jokes & ridicule, even coining Busshu-suru meaning "to do the Bush thing or bushing it". It was also spoofed in the film "Hot Shots! Part Deux." (wikipedia.org)
submitted by carl2k1
TIL about the Viviers family, who moved from South Africa to Northern BC, Canada because of an extreme allergy to sunlight. Prince Rupert is one of the most reliably cloudy places on the planet, and the Viviers family won a Supreme Court decision to become permanent residents on medical grounds. (cbc.ca)
submitted by grazerbat
TIL The FDR Memorial in Washington DC was designed to be accessible to people with physical impairments. However, vision-impaired visitors complained that the braille was illegible due to improper dot spacing, and in some cases was placed eight feet off the ground. (latimes.com)
submitted by lordpond
TIL King Louis XIV of France covered his telescope’s objective lens with a piece of smoked glass to view the solar eclipse. This method remained popular for a couple hundred years until the 1930s when products such as the Eclipse-o-scope became available (inventorsdigest.com)
submitted by vancouver_reader
TIL: William H. H. Murray's 1869 book "Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp Life in the Adirondacks" was so popular that in a matter of months it caused a "Murray Rush"---where thousands of hunters, fishers, and campers from NY and Boston went to Adirondacks and spurred modern American camping. (nysarchivestrust.org)
submitted by kindaweirdflexbutok
TIL the painting Las Meninas is one of the most analyzed works in western art. Critics have called it the “theology of painting” and “true philosophy of art”. It’s influenced many artists including Goya and Sargent. Picasso was so obsessed with the painting he executed 58 different interpretations. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by on_the_fire_escape
TIL The presidential yacht of Yugoslavia, Galeb, was a former Italian and Nazi warship. The Nazis minelayer was sunk by the Allies in 1944 and Yugoslavia raised it, converting it to a yacht in 1952. Ship visitors include Queen Elizabeth II, Khrushchev, Nehru, Nasser, and Kurt Douglas. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by jamescookenotthatone
TIL that Marlon Brando horrified a Superman The Movie producer in their first meeting by proposing that Jor-El appear as a green suitcase or a bagel with Brando's voice, but director Richard Donner used flattery to persuade the actor to portray Jor-El himself. (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted by Rami-Al-Saham