› added 7 months ago

19

TIL that 30 years after cocaine was first isolated from the coca plant, it was first tested as an anesthetic. In 1884, Austrian ophthalmologist Karl Koller instilled a 2% solution of cocaine into his own eye and tested its effectiveness by pricking his eye with a needle.

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wY71 TIL the “Monte Carlo fallacy” was named after an actual game of roulette played in Monte Carlo where the ball landed on black 26 times in a row. Millions of francs were lost by gamblers who believed red was “due” to come up.
5YjGk TIL Teflon was introduced by DuPont in nonstick cookware in 1946 and was the very “forever chemical.” These types of chemicals are linked to many diseases, never break down in the environment, and are now present in the blood of nearly every American adult and newborn baby.
0w7Rp TIL the stadion, formerly also anglicized as stade, was an ancient Greek unit of length, based on the circumference of a typical sports stadium of the time; showing how we're not the first to measure some things in football fields.
gr8Oy TIL that from the early 1900s until about 1945, milk was commonly used to make many plastic ornaments, including buttons, decorative buckles, beads, fountain pens, and fancy comb and brush sets. Milk plastic (called casein plastic) was even used to make jewelry for Queen Mary of England!
jNOGQ TIL that when Argentina were poised to invade Chile in 1978 during Operation Soberanía, Chile drew up plans to poison the water supply of Buenos Aires in retaliation [article in Spanish]