› added 1 year ago

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TIL: The Akaname is a Japanese yokai (demon)... who licks the filth and scum present in bathtubs and bathrooms and translates to filth licker. It one story, it can transform into a beautiful woman who appears in a hot spring, offers to scrub a man's back, only to lick him down to the bones.

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j7rX TIL A study found that because 75% of students had to work while going to college only part time, over 75% were unable to finish even after 8 years. Only 6.1% of working part time students graduated within 4 years, and only 25% graduate within 8.
VBg44 TIL about the French astronomer (with the longest name I have ever seen) who twice travelled to India to observe the transit of Venus. He returned to a family that presumed him dead and was fighting over his estate.
b9NKj TIL that despite Disney claiming that Steamboat Willie was the "first synchronized sound cartoon", the actual first cartoon to feature synchronized sound was the Fleischer Studios "My Old Kentucky Home" in 1926, 2 years before Steamboat Willie was released
d8ZKd TIL that Japanese hornets can grow up to the size of your thumb and stings you with a flesh dissolving acid that also acts as a pheromone to alert the other hornets to sting you until you die.
p8GEb TIL General Patton was removed from his post in Italy during WW2 for slapping shell-shocked soldiers in the face. He was transferred to England to lead a fake regiment of inflatable tanks, which served as a distraction to convince the Germans that Normandy would not be the spot of Allied invasion.