Thousands of weird-but-true facts

Samples from a monster-length Twitter thread of hard-to-believe facts:

“One of the favourite shades of paint used by Pre-Raphaelite painters, Mummy Brown, was made by adding ground up remains of Egyptian mummies.”

“Hippos were almost released in Louisiana as a way to control invasive plants and as a food source for people”

“There are about 150 million starlings in North America. They are all descended from 60 birds released in Central Park, by a guy whose motivation was to introduce them to America because they had been mentioned in Shakespeare.”

“The last guillotining in France occurred the year Star Wars first premiered.”

— MF