Post * 16klV — Curious Curator

› added 1 year ago

55

TIL that "U and non-U English" was a British theory of dialects in the 1950s that noted that the aspiring middle classes actually used "more refined" language than the upper classes - like "pardon?" instead of "what?", and to "pass on" instead of to "die"

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N7lJP TIL about the Great Stork Derby, a contest held by a Toronto financier and practical joker which bequeathed the residue of his significant estate to the woman in Toronto who could produce the most children in the decade following his death. Two women won and were each given $1.91m in today's dollars

KOZLa TIL During the long winter of 1886, horses and cattle on the Great Plains died when their breaths froze over the ends of their noses, making it impossible for them to breathe.

7GLp TIL in 1945 a computer at Harvard malfunctioned and Grace Hopper, who was working on the computer, investigated, found a moth in one of the circuits and removed it. Ever since, when something goes wrong with a computer, it is said to have a bug in it.

1aek4 TIL that in 1688 false reports of Irish soldiers burning and massacring English towns prompted a mass panic, with thousands of people arming themselves and preparing to resist non-existent groups of marauding Irishmen.

X0n86 TIL that even though September is not the most common birth month in the U.S., 9 of the top 10 most common birthdays fall between Sept 9th - Sept 20th. This correlates to abnormally high conception rates during the December holiday season aka “New Years Babies”