epY06 TIL about the Kumari of Nepal, young girls who, before their first period, are worshiped as living goddesses. The girl chosen to be the Kumari of Patan (the most important Kumari except for the royal Kumari) in 1953 never had her period and served until 1984, when she was replaced against her will.
VB9M0 TIL in the English language, nearly all profanities have minced variants, which are words which have been created as politically-correct versions of swearing.
X0REk TIL Epilepsy is a long term brain condition that causes repeated, unprovoked seizures. Seizures happen because of abnormal electrical activity in the brain.
OGmoa TIL Bill Melendez, director of the Peanuts/Snoopy specials from 1965 - 2006, first started in the industry in the 1940's as an animator at Disney on such classics as Pinocchio and Bambi, before working as an animator on Looney Tunes, UPA shorts, and Hanna Barbera. He died in 2008 at 91.
69OEQ TIL that Lake Placid, New York, one of two cities to have hosted the Winter Olympics twice (‘32, ‘80), has a population of 2,205 as of 2020
woQLY TIL after a man fell in the snow in his backyard & broke his neck, his dog helped save his life by keeping him warm and alert by lying on his body and licking his face & hands for 20 hours until a neighbor finally stopped by and rushed him to the hospital. After surgery, he was able to walk again.
R5Q7a TIL larger Dolomedes water spiders hunt fish
W7WkL TIL Bill Gates and Steve Jobs announced Microsoft Excel for the Macintosh at a joint press conference on May 2, 1985. The Windows version of Excel wasn't released until over two years later in 1987 with the release Windows 2.0.
9weYp TIL that beef cattle are typically slaughtered at 18–24 months of age despite having a natural lifespan of 18–25 years
nW1eW TIL: The executioner who hanged the Nazis at Nuremberg lied about his experience, claiming to have performed hangings in Texas and Oklahoma after both had switched to electrocution. The hangings he performed were badly botched. 4 years later, he was electrocuted changing a light bulb.
4kwXX TIL U.S. time zones were first adopted in 1883 because railroads needed standardized schedules, using telegraph signals to synchronize clocks & civilian timekeeping followed later.
x6xV1 TIL: The Peking Man fossils were a set of anthropoid bones discovered in 1920s in Zhoukoudian (near Beijing, China) dating back around 500,000 years. In 1941, after the Japanese invasion of China, the original fossils disappeared and have not been found.