TIL - Bulgaria , over the past 35 years, has seen the fastest decline in population of any country in the world — a 28 percent drop (e360.yale.edu)
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 that 1604, King James I wrote ‘A Counterblaste to Tobacco’, in which he described smoking as a ‘custome lothesome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs.
TIL You can see all of the Lemmy community comments and posts that have been removed at the bottom of the sidebar.
It’s called Modlog in the Monitoring Stats section....
TIL Haydn's "Surprise Symphony" was NOT written to wake up sleeping audience members; that was just a myth
Back in school I heard the story that Haydn wrote the “Surprise Symphony” because he was sick of people sleeping through his music, and wanted to startle them awake. It seems like this was a myth....
TIL The candlefish is so rich in oils that when supplied with a wick it can be burned like a candle"
www.uapress.com/product/
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 Black mold is used in the manufacturing of Citric Acid
The substrate for the fermentation is a carbohydrate, usually molasses or a sugar, such as raw beet, refined beet, or cane sugars, or a syrup. … Certain inorganic nutrients, such as ammonium nitrate, potassium phosphate, magnesium sulfate, zinc sulfate, and potassium ferrocyanide, are added. The pH is adjusted to between 3 and...
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 that retired chemist, Khonghao Shou, predicted the 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran by observing cloud formations.
He not only predicted the approximate date, but also the magnitude and epicenter....
TIL that France and Spain are in the wrong time zone because of Nazis.
France was put on to German time when conquered by Nazi Germany....
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.
