
An influential Italian-American organisation has appealed to Silvio Berlusconi, asking the prime minister to cancel Italy's plan to award De Niro honorary citizenship.

TIL when Robert De Niro sought Italian citizenship, he was opposed by the largest Italian-American group for damaging the reputation of Italians by playing gangsters
An influential Italian-American organisation has appealed to Silvio Berlusconi, asking the prime minister to cancel Italy's plan to award De Niro honorary citizenship.
On the other hand, apparently the Italians loved him:
In Ferrazzano, the village which De Niro's great grandparents left in search of the US dream in the late 19th century, most of its 3,280 residents are among his greatest fans and are adamant that he should be formally made an Italian. He does not officially qualify for a passport because neither his parents nor his grandparents were Italian born.
De Niro was born in New York in 1943, and has never visited the village.
Every August for eight years, the village's now wealthy population of lawyers, doctors and office workers, most of who commute to work in the nearby town of Campobasso, has turned out for a week long festival of De Niro films.
TIL in 2011 the Argentine government is believed to have begun making McDonald's underprice the Big Mac specifically to cover the country's high inflation on The Economist's Big Mac index
What do burger prices tell us about the reliability of official inflation figures?
The Big Mac index started as a joke, but became a somewhat respectable—if still highly informal—way of measuring Purchasing Power Parity. Argentina took advantage of this by making it really cheap but hiding it so no one would order it, artificially improving the country's score.
TIL treadmills originated as a form of punishment in prisons
Exercising on a treadmill often feels like torture, and that’s not exactly a coincidence.
Hence why they're called tread-"mills"—they were used to power mills to pump water or grind grain.
TIL that no one knows what the "p" in "pH" stands for
Michelle Francl reminds us that even a rigorous scientific discipline such as chemistry has its own myths and legends — and explains why this isn't such a bad thing.
"Power" (or "Potenz" or "puissance") is the most common claim, but potential, pondus, and percent are also common. When the original author designated it, he implied that it was just a random mathematical letter, akin to x, and that it didn't stand for anything, although from context one could argue it stood for potential?
TIL the Soviet Union still produced advertisements, often of fake products, to make itself look more prosperous
Because the government required all companies to spend one percent of their revenue on advertising, the Soviet Union’s sole ad agency churned out...
TIL Big Bird's puppeteer navigates by a TV inside the suit, showing what is being recorded by the camera
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TIL that Civilloquy.com is an instance, ha
Quite a unique domain name and nice focus that the instance has, cool!
TIL: Nick Offerman of “ Parks and Recreation” is married to the woman who played his psycho-ex Tammy in real life
Parks and Recreation gave the midwestern actor the role of a lifetime – one that he struggled to escape. But now, with a stunning standalone episode of The Last Of Us and a new standup tour, he’s found there’s life after Ron