dDgyE TIL about Toxic Oil Syndrome in Spain in 1981, which was used to explain a mysterious illness that affected over 20000 people and is believed to have killed over a thousand. Authorities placed the blame on industrial grade rapeseed oil sold as food, but many believe pesticides were to blame.
KY1G9 TIL about Baarle-Hertog, Belgium, which consists of 26 parcels of land largely within the Dutch city of Baarle-Nassau. In WWI, these were safe zones for Belgians resisting occupation in WWI, as the neutral Dutch government wouldn’t allow the Imperial German army to cross their land into these areas.
a8bEJ TIL about the Gospel of Eve, an almost entirely lost book from the New Testament apocrypha. Dating to the 2nd-6th century AD, an early Christian Gnostic sect used it to justify free love and eating semen as a religious act
ZpbPY TIL that Bobby Fischer reportedly had his dental fillings removed out of fear that they were being used to spy on him, turning his mouth into a potential radio transmitter.
7861Z TIL: That a man in Melbourne Australia has been faking seizures for years and then asking passersby’s (usually men) to sit on him to get the seizures to stop!
kJb5e TIL that in 2008, the Tokyo Broadcasting System filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against ABC, claiming that the game show Wipeout was "a blatant copycat" of Takeshi's Castle. The case was settled in November 2011.
Eg7Gd TIL some universities award MAs to BA recipients without additional work
Y7beP TIL that Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten are members of Interpol, despite being classified as dependent territories of the Netherlands and not sovereign states
BgY0x TIL the Plymouth Pilgrims, a few years after celebrating the First Thanksgiving, sent armed men to arrest the leader of a nearby settlement who had set up a maypole, sang bawdy songs and invited Native American women to join them in celebrating the traditional English May Day holiday
rNbyW TIL that the most popularly-grown form of strawberry, the garden strawberry, is a hybrid of two other species, the Virginia strawberry and the Chilean strawberry
NXJxM TIL that Niccolo Machiavelli has a long forgotten work, often entitled "The Description" for brevity, that describes in detail the methods Cesare Borgia took in deceiving and ultimately assassinating rival leaders who conspired against him.
l7b0B TIL that helium was discovered on the Sun, long before it was ever found on Earth.