TIL of anchorites, medieval Christian ascetics who were walled into a cell ("anchorhold") attached to a church for their entire adult lives. Through small windows, they received sustenance, dispose... (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL how trash is disposed of in modern large submarines. Trash is deposited into a Trash Disposal Unit (TDU) which collects and compacts it into a galvanized steel can. A ball valve is opened allow... (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL about Wu-Tang Clan's 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,' an album so exclusive, only one copy was ever produced. (en.wikipedia.org)
There are no circulating copies of the album online and it cannot be commercially exploited until 2103, but it can be played at listening parties....
TIL Reddit used to be open source. In 2017, they went closed source citing ‘transparency’ issues
TIL in 1980 the FBI formed a fake company and attempted to bribe members of congress. Nearly 25% of those tested accepted the bribe, and were convicted.
TIL platypuses glow under blacklight (www.nationalgeographic.com)
TIL Sea Urchins Like to Wear Hats (i.ibb.co)
cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/538582
TIL: How António Moniz Won the Nobel Prize for the Frontal Lobotomy in 1949 (medium.com)
TIL from the school of OMG why didn’t I think of that
Alt milk tetra pack repurposed as drink tray.
TIL that in Melbourne, a 1 : 1 000 000 000 scale model of the solar system includes a mini-Proxima-Centauri that is one-time-around-the-entire-world away at this scale. (stkildamelbourne.com.au)
From the pdf:...
TIL: UN Resolution 3379 Passed in 1975 with a vote of 72 to 35 Determined that Zionism is A Form of Racism (medium.com)
TIL the American Conservapedia, among other atrocities, redirects Linux to GNU/Linux (www.conservapedia.com)
I guess they have a quantum taste for GNU!
TIL about the social history of Jell-O Salad (www.seriouseats.com)
TIL abou the Amalgam Comics, a joint publication by DC & Marvel featuring characters that were a mix of those from both universes (en.wikipedia.org)
About the comics: antifandom.com/marvel/wiki/Amalgam_Comics...
TIL 2010 Vancouver luge gold medallist Felix Loch had his medal melted into two discs and gave one to the parents of a deceased competitor who died in a practice run on the day of the opening ceremony (www.si.com)
TIL that the top soccer league in Spain is officially known as "LaLiga EA Sports" (en.m.wikipedia.org)
TIL that Gavrilo Princip, who assassinated Franz Ferdinand, died of Tuberculosis three years and ten months after the assassination. (en.wikipedia.org)
Princip was nineteen years old at the time and too young to be executed, as he was twenty-seven days shy of the twenty-year minimum age limit required by Habsburg law.[43] On Thursday 28 October 1914 the court found Princip guilty of murder and high treason, he received the maximum sentence of twenty years in prison...
TIL about Salim Kara, who stole over $2m of coins by using a car antenna and a magnet (www.nofreelunch.co.uk)
TIL how Carroll O'Connor became Archie Bunker (en.wikipedia.org)
The character Archie Bunker in All In The Family was originally offered to Mickey Rooney, who declined. Carroll O'Connor lived in Europe, and accepted the role only because he thought the show would fail and he could go home, so much so that part of his contract with Norman Lear included a return plane ticket to Rome so that he...
TIL: If I'm in a driver I need to stop for pedestrians at crossovers, even if the lights aren’t flashing. (www.theglobeandmail.com)
Link with no paywall:...
TIL the history behind the "space melody".
You may know it as Space Melody by Luna Park or as ResuRection by ППК (English: PPK), but the original melody was composed by Eduard Artemyev for the 1979 Soviet film Siberiade. The original name of the song, as titled in the movie’s soundtrack release, is la mort du héroes (the death of heroes, if my French is correct)....
TIL the role the Congolese played in creating the atomic bomb (www.wired.com)
It is a sad history of cruelty and oppression, and a big part of the story that didn’t make the screen in Oppenheimer. It gives the marble scenes a much deeper meaning.
TIL CJK compatibilty ideographs (often used to put a lot of symbols in fonts such as 着 which displays as the Wii logo on my machine) were originally allocated to support older standards for storing Chinese characters and derivatives in code points (en.wikipedia.org)
Sorry for the confusing title. Basically before Unicode, a bunch of different standards for storing Chinese characters (also used in Korean and Japanese which also have some of their own derivatives) emerged. When Unicode sought to unify every standard they of course had to add compatibility for older standards so for all the...
TIL "jerk" had the meaning of "stupid" (www.theringer.com)
Great article by the host of my favorite Podcast....
