Commented - til - kbin.life

TIL - about Louis Wain and his portrayals of cats. Before Wain, cats in England were often thought of with contempt, but his work helped to show them as something to be liked, admired and even loved (illustrationchronicles.com)

TIL The first air conditioner was created not for cooling a room but to prevent humidity causing swelling pages and blurry prints in a printing press (www.smithsonianmag.com)

At the turn of the 20th century, humidity threatened the reputation of Brooklyn’s Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographic and Publishing Company’s high-quality color printing. After two summers of extreme heat disrupted business and caused swelling pages and blurry prints, the printing company found that a nascent cooling industry...

TIL A Car Sponsored by Durex Condoms Kept F1 off British TV for much of 1976 (www.bbc.com)

It was arguably the most famous season in Formula 1 history, featuring thrilling racing, off-track controversies and the near-death of the sport’s most famous driver, Niki Lauda, as he battled James Hunt for the world championship....

TIL May Day, not on the same day as US Labor Day, started "in commemoration of the Haymarket Riot in Chicago (1886)." (www.britannica.com)

In 1889 an international federation of socialist groups and trade unions designated May 1 as a day in support of workers, in commemoration of the Haymarket Riot in Chicago (1886). Five years later, U.S. Pres. Grover Cleveland, uneasy with the socialist origins of Workers’ Day, signed legislation to make Labor Day—already...

TIL JSFuck, an esoteric subset of JS that only uses operators, could be used to hack eBay customers by injecting it into item listings. As JSFuck obfuscated the actual code, attackers were able to get browsers that see the listing to run external scripts. (arstechnica.com)

This news is from almost exactly 8 years ago. Softpedia reported 13 days later that eBay partially patched it, but the patch was insufficient. I could not find further updates, but I do know that eBay has since removed more advanced JavaScript (incl. JSFuck) from all listings in 2017....

TIL Keiko, the orca from Free Willy, is buried in a grave in Norway (www.atlasobscura.com)

TIL A city made of ice in Harbin that's built annually and will melt away after 3 months (rumble.com)

TIL about Hallstatt mine; the oldest mine in the world (www.google.com)

https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/42d72783-7b6f-4bc6-9562-f171634bfb93.webp

TIL Stonehenge has been 'restored' at least 3 times, and may not be in it's original position due to stone removal and replacement. (odysee.com)

Found as one of the top recommended videos on Odyssey.com

TIL: In the song DARE it's "you've got to press it on you" rather than "you've got depression on you" (genius.com)

TIL "several nations recognize the right of prisoners to attempt to escape prison or jail, including Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Mexico due to what is seen as basic human nature..." (www.grunge.com)

Source: grunge.com/…/why-it-is-legal-to-attempt-to-escape…...

TIL - Laboratory experiments show that bacteria really do eat and digest plastic (www.sciencedaily.com)

TIL the term "Mad as a Hatter" likely came from hat makers using mercury and the resulting mercury poisoning. (en.wikipedia.org)

Mercury poisoning of hat-makers – In 18th and 19th century England, mercury was used in the production of felt, which was commonly used in the hat-making trade at the time. Long-term use of mercury products often resulted in mercury poisoning-induced erethism among hat-makers.[1][2] In the late 19th-century United States, a...

TIL: How Henry Ford’s Strange Social Program Aimed to Control The Personal Lives Of Workers (medium.com)

TIL Shrek is based on a very weird book (www.polygon.com)

Didn’t even knew there was a shrek book, much less that he had laser-eyes. wtf the book looks better than the movie...

TIL about the concept of Weaponized Incompetence, which probably explains every issue you ever faced in a bureaucracy (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL a guide dog named Roselle led a group of people including her blind owner down 78 flights of stairs before the North Tower collapsed on 9/11. (wikiless.tiekoetter.com)

She only stopped to give kisses to a woman who was having a panic attack.

til Don Pardo worked as announcer on SNL until his death, age 96! (en.wikipedia.org)

Dominick George "Don" Pardo Jr. (February 22, 1918 – August 18, 2014) was an American radio and television announcer whose career spanned more than seven decades. A member of the Television Hall of Fame, Pardo was noted for his 70-year tenure with NBC, working as the announcer for early incarnations of such notable shows as...

TIL the only guy in ZZ Top without a giant beard is named Frank Beard. (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL there was a third founder of Apple. He sold his 10% of the company for $800 worried that his assets could be seized by creditors if the company failed (www.cnbc.com)

TIL the USA has "national emergencies" still ongoing that date back to 1979 (en.m.wikipedia.org)

TIL Mitsubishi made a Jeep CJ until 1998. (en.m.wikipedia.org)

While picking up my daughter from school today, I noticed an old jeep in the parking lot, but did not think much of it until I saw the tri-spoked Mitsubishi logo above the grill and did quite the double-take. Apparently a number of foreign companies were licensed to produce them after WW2.