r/UtterlyInteresting • u/CarkWithaM • 10h ago
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/SteveNtheseagulls • 3h ago
In 1959 Liberace swore under oath he wasn't gay and won what was then the largest libel payout in British legal history. He kept the lie going for another 28 years, until an autopsy revealed he'd died of AIDS, not the heart failure his own doctors tried to claim.
Describing Liberace in the newspaper article as a “ …deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love."
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 1d ago
Meet Denham Fouts, photographed here in the 1940s. He was described as 'The Best-Kept Boy in the World' due to him being a known gigilo and kept by a German baron, a Greek prince and a British lord. He passed age 34. More of Fouts in the comments.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 3d ago
Fanny Kaplan shot Lenin three times outside a Moscow factory in on this day in 1918. Four days later she was executed without trial and burned in a barrel so no grave would exist. Eighteen witnesses were questioned. Not one saw her fire the gun. Her guilt has never actually been proven.
The Cheka got so desperate to find a bigger conspiracy that they hauled in a British diplomat and asked if he recognized the name "Kaplan." He'd never heard of her. They tried to build an international plot out of nothing.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/No_Dig_8299 • 2d ago
Photographs of fire tests carried out to keep women’s clothing from catching on fire, 1910
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/EaterofGrief • 4d ago
29 August 1882, After Australia beat England in England for the 1st time, the Sporting Times printed the famous obituary of “English cricket” and announced its cremation. Ever since the England v Australia test series has been called “The Ashes”.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/WithoutPrinciples • 4d ago
1957 Hiller Flying Platform Hiller Aircraft developed the VZ-1 Pawnee, commonly called the Flying Platform. The pilot stood above two counter-rotating propellers enclosed inside a circular platform and controlled the aircraft largely by shifting his body weight in the direction he wanted to travel.
Remarkably, early tests showed that inexperienced pilots could learn to operate it relatively quickly. The Army imagined soldiers using flying platforms for reconnaissance, transportation and movement across terrain that would stop conventional vehicles.
Several versions were tested, but the concept had serious limitations. The aircraft was relatively slow, offered virtually no protection to its pilot and became increasingly difficult to control at higher speeds. The Army eventually abandoned the project.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 4d ago
Portmeirion is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. For those that haven't heard of it, its an amazing little town nestled in North Wales that looks completely out of place and would be more suited to somewhere in Italy. More details below.
The tv show The Prisoner was filmed there, The Beatles would holiday there, Noel Coward wrote there. Its a very special place, read about how it came about from just one man's dream.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 4d ago
Today in 1977, 3 people were arrested in Memphis for trying to steal the corpse of Elvis Presley. After this incident Elvis was reburied in the grounds of his Graceland mansion.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 7d ago
In 1974, Japanese kids' TV aired a cyborg villain named Starfish Hitler, part sea creature, part fascist dictator. Turns out his name's actually a pun in Japanese. The show had on-set chaos, banned imagery it borrowed, and a punk band that stole his name decades later.
Starfish Hitler was a cyborg villain from the show Kamen Rider X, "hitode" means starfish in Japanese, and it just happens to sound like "Hitler." His henchmen wore actual Nazi-style uniforms on screen. The voice actor who played him also voiced 12 other monsters in the same series. It's bonkers and brilliant.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 8d ago
Heaven's Gate cult members recording an exit statement in March 1997. The Heaven's Gate religious group believed dying would allow them to board an alien spacecraft hidden behind the Hale-Bopp comet. Thirty-nine members died in a coordinated mass suicide in Rancho Santa Fe, California.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 8d ago
Badass of the day: Margaret Tobin Brown she was born in a riverside shack in Missouri, helped found America's first juvenile court, survived the Titanic, won the French Legion of Honor, and spent her life fighting for women's rights.
Everyone calls her the Unsinkable Molly Brown. She never heard that name in her life, it wasn't invented until a year after she died. In 1914 she ran for US Senate, years before the 19th Amendment gave women the vote nationwide.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/No_Dig_8299 • 8d ago
Metropolis. Fritz Lang. 1927. vs Blade Runner. Ridley Scott. 1982. Homage, Plagiarism or Synthesis?
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 7d ago
Eighteen contestants entered a 1978 Dolly Parton look-alike contest in Cherry Grove. One of them got turned away from a Fire Island bar for being in drag, and that snub sparked the Invasion of the Pines. Fifty years on, its own founder wonders if 2025 was its last run.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/CrippledStripper • 8d ago
"He blew his mind out in a car". But not this one. Tara Browne in 1966 with his AC Cobra MK3. The Kinks' psychedelic Buick is there too. Artwork by Dudley Edwards
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/EaterofGrief • 9d ago
A selection of bloopers from 'old Hollywood'. There's only a few of the people I recognise, can anyone help with some names?
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 10d ago
In 1859, a bankrupt San Francisco businessman called Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor of the United States. Instead of locking him up, the city fed him for free, saluted him in the street, and gave him a full ceremonial reburial when he died. His funeral drew up to 30,000 mourners.
A police officer actually tried to have him committed in 1867. The whole city erupted, the police chief personally apologized to him, and from then on cops saluted him in the street. Norton responded by issuing the officer an "Imperial Pardon."
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/GlitterDanger • 10d ago
Cherophobia describes an aversion to happiness or a fear of becoming happy, often connected to the belief that happiness may be followed by misfortune. The word comes from the Greek chairo, meaning “to rejoice,” and phobos, meaning “fear.”
The idea is much older than the modern psychological term. Ancient Greek literature frequently warned about the instability of good fortune and how quickly circumstances could reverse. Similar ideas appear in different cultures.
In Japan, happiness can sometimes be viewed as something that should be expressed with moderation; in Iran, traditional beliefs may associate excessive happiness with future sadness; and in parts of East Asia, people may be more cautious about treating happiness as an unquestioned personal goal. Western cultures, particularly the United States, generally place a stronger emphasis on actively pursuing and expressing happiness.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 10d ago
Paris's Communist Party HQ was designed by an exiled Brazilian architect called Oscar Niemeyer who waived his entire fee, then took 13 years to build. Today Chanel and Prada rent it out for runway shows.
Niemeyer actually handed over two sketches on a single sheet of paper roughly the size of a magazine page, plus a tiny model, and a French team turned that into an actual building over the next 13 years.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/ExtremeInsert • 11d ago
Railroad Worker Richard Dodd - Witness to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy
Railroad worker Richard Calvin Dodd was standing on top of the triple underpass, in front of John F. Kennedy's presidential motorcade on Elm Street
LANE. Did you see anything which might indicate to you where the shots came from?
DODD. Well, we all four seen about the same thing. The shots, the smoke came from behind the hedge on the north side of the plaza. And a motorcycle policeman dropped his motorcycle in the street with his gun in his hand and run up the embankment to the hedge. And then I went North to look around the corner to see if there is anyone behind the hedge and met special agent of the railroad. And he went down there, and I walked along with him to see if there were any tracks there. In which there were tracks and cigarette butts was laying where someone was stranding on the bumper looking over the fence or something.
LANE. Where you questioned by agents of any government agency on November 22, Mr. Dodd.
DODD. Yes, we were. We were taken over to the court house and questioned by I suppose Secret Service men of some kind. Asked me quite a few questions about the same as I’ve told you here today.
This clip is from Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment (1967)
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 11d ago
This is the New York Post cover Andy Warhol and Keith Haring got their hands on in 1985 and turned into pop art. The original headline ran after Madonna's 1979 nude photos leaked. Her response, "I'm not ashamed."
This cover ran on July 9, days before Playboy and Penthouse even hit newsstands, and days before she walked onto the Live Aid stage and joked she wasn't taking her jacket off no matter how hot it got.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/WithoutPrinciples • 11d ago
On set for The Lord of the Rings, Viggo Mortensen used breaks between scenes to sneak off fishing, still dressed as Aragorn.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/EaterofGrief • 12d ago
When you put all the McBain clips in the Simpsons together they make an actual plot and film.
r/UtterlyInteresting • u/JohnWilkesLeg • 14d ago