wo4mP TIL that in Japan during the Edo period, the gonin-gumi system held groups of five households collectively responsible for each other's crimes, so people were punished for things their neighbors did.
R5yD4 TIL daisies, dandelions, and sunflowers all evolved from a flower that once existed in Antarctica during the Late Cretaceous (85 to 90 Mya), when the climate was much warmer, dinosaurs walked the Earth and the South Pole was forested.
W7bJN TIL that the A-10 'Warthog' close-air-support plane, infamous for being "a gun with a plane", has to return the spent shell casings from it's massive forward mounted autocannon to the plane to maintain it's center-of-gravity.
9wXMM TIL in 1888, an undertaker named Almon Strowger conceived of a device that could automatically connect phone calls. He thought that manual switchboard operators were interfering with his business; he wanted to bypass them. The 'Strowger' switch would go on to see wide usage into the 20th century
nWMVo TIL that black skin, commonly associated with sub-Saharan Africans, rather than being a "default" early human pigmentation, is caused by a specific gene that developed 500k years ago and is specific to Africa
4kWdg TIL that a background actor in The Exorcist was later convicted of murder and has further been implicated as a serial killer
x6nK5 TIL that the Nuremberg Charter's definition of "crimes against humanity", which was used in the Nuremberg Trials, includes only acts committed during a war of aggression. This was partly because the US was concerned that Jim Crow segregation would otherwise be considered a crime against humanity
epb46 TIL the Cajuns of Louisiana are literally French Canadians who were exiled south
VBbJ0 TIL Commodore mistook a company that exported baked beans (Taurus Impex) for a software company (Torus), sending them 10 free Amiga systems to port network software. Taurus' founder, Peter Molyneux, would use this case of mistaken identity to pivot to the software business and, later, video games.
X0bJk TIL About Dynamite Guns. Briefly in military use in the late 1800s, they fired shells of gelatinized dynamite using compressed air much like a potato cannon. They fell out of favor due to their complexity and inaccuracy.
OGvDa TIL that Kenya is home to extremely rare white giraffes caused by a condition called leucism, which reduces skin pigmentation but still leaves their eyes dark . Only a single male is believed to remain after poachers killed a white female and her calf in 2020
69w7Q TIL that McDonald's McRib is not made from ribs. It is entirely made from pork shoulder. The boneless seasoned pork is formed to look like a mini rack of ribs, even though it does not contain rib meat.