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135

TIL that Europeans used to rent pineapples to display as status symbols

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via reddit.com

KOYJQ An extraordinary collection of images from Burns Archive shows the extent to which gas masks were promoted as an essential part of everyday life in the early 20th century. It had been 20 years since the end of World War I, when chlorine gas—and, later, mustard gas—had first been used. The estimates of total casualties from this form of chemical warfare are staggering: 88,000 dead and 1,200,000 injured. With war once again on the horizon, Britain and continental Europe began taking early precautions. In 1938, the British government issued 35 million “General Civilian Respirators”. Everyone from ballerinas to surgeons were encouraged to wear the masks.
GnP7 TIL that a man on trial brought a bag of poop into the courtroom, smeared feces on his lawyer and then threw the remainder of the poop at the jury.
oebA TIL In 1988, a man with severe OCD shot himself in the head in an attempt to commit suicide. Instead of killing him, the bullet destroyed the part of his brain that was responsible for his OCD, and he went on to become a straight-A college student a few years later.
VLg0 TIL Goldman Sachs made big money helping to falsify Greece’s EU application, hiding massive amounts of debt. They then used that inside information to bet AGAINST Greek bonds, and made a killing.
vPB18 TIL of the view that the response to the "Year 2000 problem" was indeed an overreaction, as evidenced by countries such as South Korea and Russia who invested little to nothing in Y2K remediation having the same negligible Y2K problems as countries that spent enormous sums of money