› added 7 years ago

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TIL Stethoscope was invented when a 'gentleman' French doctor got too embarrassed to check the heartbeat of a female patient by tapping at her chest. So, he rolled up a sheet of paper to create a tube, and then placed it on her chest. The method worked, and stethoscope was invented.

mx4yO TIL of William Rankin who survived ejecting from his plane and the failure of his parachute, then spent 40 minutes falling through a several-miles-deep cumulonimbus cloud which featured lightning strikes, a hailstorm and what he described as the "feeling" of thunder.
5YWlR TIL had it not been for the Norman Conquest of 1066, the English we speak today would have been much different and more restrictive. The merging of Old English and Norman French led to Modern English being sort of hybrid of the two, giving another shade of meaning to words such as "swine" vs "pork".
a87o9 TIL that since 1976, the New York Yankees have maintained a strict appearance policy that states: “All players, coaches and male executives are forbidden to display any facial hair other than mustaches, and scalp hair may not be grown below the collar. Long sideburns and muttonchops are not banned.”
w5pE TIL Tina Fey lost 30 pounds after seeing herself on camera for the first time as an extra on SNL - a year later, she was named the first ever female head writer
9YQy7 TIL of a serial arsonist in California who worked as an arson investigator and fire captain, and would commit arson on his way to and from arson investigator conferences. Before his arrest, he even wrote a novel about a firefighter who was a serial arsonist.