› added 10 years ago

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TIL that despite Olive Garden’s advertising that it has a cooking institute in Tuscany, there is no institute. Olive Garden does send a number of employees to Tuscany each year, but they spend only a few hours at a local restaurant in its off-season.

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J1Kpl TIL the reason Listerine works as a mouthwash was not known to science until its 106th year on the market
yNbJ TIL that there are two related phenomenon of déjà vu with names: jamais vu and presque vu. Jamais vu is, for instance, when a word is repeated so much that it doesn’t seem like a word anymore, and presque vu is when a word is on the tip of your tongue but you can’t think of it.
VJ6p TIL Heath Ledger kept a Joker Diary. In it he wrote as the Joker and included a list of things he believed the Joker would find funny including blind babies, geniuses with brain damage, and sombreros
4YM5 TIL of a Malawian teenager who taught himself how to build a windmill out of junk and bring power to his village. He then went on to build a second, larger windmill to power irrigation pumps. He did this all from books he read in the library.
8Dd8 TIL that the Prairie Vole (a rodent) is monogamous, while its closest relative the Montane Vole is promiscuous. The ADH receptor gene between the two species is different and cause different behavior. The same gene was injected into a laboratory mouse that showed monogamous behavior afterwards.