Post * 4MO5 — Curious Curator

› added 10 years ago

95

TIL - Europeans didn’t know Marco Polo’s “Cathay” was really China or that the city “Cambulac” was really Beijing, until 1598 when Jesuit priests in Beijing talked to Arab merchants there, who still called it Cambulac. Maps until the 17th century showed China and Cathay as 2 different empires.

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LkaBZ TIL about Stuckie the coon hound that in 1960 chased a racoon 28 feet up inside the hollow trunk of a tree, then got stuck up there until loggers cut the tree down in 1980. He was mummified and almost perfectly preserved due to the tannins in the tree and inaccessibility to predators.

oPWA TIL McDonald’s is one of the leading contributors to deforestation in the Amazon and uses questionable tactics to do so.

kO51d TIL that Saint Valentine is not only the patron saint of love, but also of beekeeping. This puts a different perspective of the common Valentine's Day phrase "Bee Mine".

18e4 TIL, in 1985, a doctor in Lovell, Wyoming was convicted of sexually assaulting patients for over 25 years. One of the reasons he was able to get away with it for so long was that many of his victims were strict Mormons and didn’t know what a proper pelvic exam, or even sex, felt like.

NXQj6 TIL about "topographical disorientation", the inability to orient oneself in one's surroundings. Some people are affected from childhood despite a lack of any apparent brain damage, neurological condition, or cognitive defect.