Commented - til - kbin.life

TIL about de la Chapelle syndrome where people with XX chromosomes are born with traditionally masculine organs & presentation. Usually those with the trait are unaware they have XX chromosomes at all (en.wikipedia.org)

The ancient Romans made many attempts to fix the calendar year before landing on 12 months and leap years (www.bbc.com)

I edited the title because my grammar is terrible

TIL Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Was An Anti-Communist CIA Operative who Kept the Feminist Movement From Discussing Class; only Gender (medium.com)

TIL that the white stuff that sometimes appears on chocolate is called "chocolate bloom". (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL: The Phrase “Death To America” Didn’t exist Before the CIA Overthrew the Iranian Government for Nationalizing their Oil in 1953 (medium.com)

TIL some species of ants farm aphids like we do cows (www.mcgill.ca)

Link: www.westcoastseeds.com/…/do-ants-farm-aphids....

TIL Soviet cosmonauts carried a shotgun on space missions (en.wikipedia.org)

It was purportedly (and probably in actuality) intended as a survival aid to be used after landings and before recovery in the Siberian wilderness, although allegedly was intended as a defensive weapon against in-space attacks by the US space program.

TIL about Wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic worldview of accepting the simple, imperfect, and transient things in the world. Similar to kintsugi (repairing broken pottery with golden paste), it's abou (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL - J and J knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder and failed to disclose it to regulators or the public. (www.reuters.com)

TIL about “passive houses,” building that are airtight and require barely any energy to heat or cool (en.m.wikipedia.org)

More info here: wsj.com/…/passive-home-design-massachusetts-2c89a…

TIL sailing ships commonly moved around without wind by warping (en.m.wikipedia.org)

Warping is throwing an anchor either manually for a small ship or by rowing the anchor out and dropping it farther away for a larger ship. Then the ship would reel it to change position. Good for maneuvering in harbor. Etymologically related to “throwing” and essentially threading a needle across the sea....

TIL Earthworms aren't native to the northern United States; they are a recent invasive species which does significant damage to boreal forests (www.outdoorlife.com)

TIL the CIA trains its spies not to slouch and lean, as that's an American tell (www.cpr.org)

TIL during the early days of the internet, companies tried to prohibit linking to some of their sites. The linked site linked to all of them during half of 2002 (web.archive.org)

In one of the even more absurd cases: According to an AP report (cited in Slashdot), Intentia International has filed criminal charges against Reuters PLC, alleging that the news service illegally obtained an earnings report that the company had not yet released, by guessing the URL at which it had been posted on Intentia's...

TIL India had a tradition in the 1970s of making military helicopters look like animals (www.peepultree.world)

TIL that there are two types of earwax: wet and dry (www.self.com)

the type of earwax you have comes down in part to your skin type, Dr. Shapiro explains. People with oilier skin may have wet earwax, while those with drier skin tend to have dry earwax, she says....

TIL psychedelics supposedly work by desynchronizing the brain (www.nature.com)

TIL most cultures and peoples all over the world have historically had trouble recognizing the color blue (www.ancientoriginsunleashed.com)

TIL North Koreans cannot go to Japan (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL the US government once banned sliced bread (www.mentalfloss.com)

TIL that a Frenchman ate a plane (en.m.wikipedia.org)

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/31e7c2b9-3af8-49c2-9483-d0eba629c56e.jpeg

Why you almost never see a clock at the mall (thehustle.co)

TIL researchers reviewed 40 episodes of the "Dr. Oz Show" and discovered that almost half of the medical advice had no supporting evidence (www.reliasmedia.com)

TIL The initial rate in 1866 for messages sent along transatlantic cable was $10 a word, with a ten word minimum. (www.pbs.org)

The initial rate in 1866 for messages sent along the transatlantic cable was ten dollars a word, with a ten word minimum, meaning that a skilled workman of the day would have to set aside ten weeks’ salary in order to send a single message. As a practical matter, this limited cable use to governments (transmissions from the...