› added 9 months ago

24

TIL William Horatio Bates developed a (dangerous and ineffective) alternative therapy method of treating nearsightedness that involved using a lens to focus sunlight directly onto a patient's eyes

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

LQYxZ TIL A South African Nationalist group called Ossewabrandwag, which included future PM John Vorster, strongly objected to South Africa's participation in WWII. They planned an uprising that was only abandoned for lack of weapons and conducted multiple acts of sabotage during the war.
QJODd TIL, in 2020, a man died of cardiac arrest as a result of drastically low potassium levels, caused by eating a bag of black licorice candy a day for three weeks.
xV7J0 TIL Spain's newest submarine was 75+ tons heavier than expected because someone put a decimal point in the wrong place. It could go down, but might not come up again.
ADK6a TIL the plague that wiped out 50% of 14th Century Europe was never really eradicated. There is an average of 7 cases of plague every year in the US. The disease usually spreads through flea bites or by eating tainted meat. It usually hits the rural west of the US. (2:04)
PYNaJ TIL of Reverend Isaac Simmons, an African-American man in Mississippi who was killed in 1944 by a white mob of 6 men who wanted his land of 270 acres Simmons and his family had owned for over 50 years. Simmons was dragged from his home, shot 3 times, and the mob cut his tongue out as well.