› added 7 months ago

19

TIL unlike other ex-British parliaments, the ruling party of Newfoundland's MPs sit to the left of the Speaker rather than the right - a tradition dating to the 1850s when the heaters were located on that side

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

0Onj TIL Coca Cola was sued for murdering three union workers in Colombia
b6Zop TIL that the term "soccer" originated in England as slang representing the "soc" in "association football"
6EB1J TIL that the forbidden fruit in the Bible is never defined as an apple. It is in fact a mistranslation that originates from the fact that the tree is defined as as "the tree of knowledge of good and evil" and that in Latin, mălum means evil while the very similar word mālum means apple.
0d87R TIL of the Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing "automaton" from the 1700s actually operated by a cleverly hidden human. It toured the palaces of Europe, even playing against Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon, who attempted to cheat multiple times, prompting the Turk to swipe all the pieces off the board.
X0O0R TIL The style of the Santa Hat was first known as a pileus hat dating back to Ancient Greece. When Pope Benedict XIV wore one in 2005 people immediately drew a comparison to Santa