› added 4 years ago

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TIL about 'baby hatches', places where mothers can safely and anonymously abandon their newborns (usually in hospitals or churches). In Germany, babies abandoned in this way are looked after for 8 weeks, during which time, the mother can 'reclaim' her child without legal repercussions.

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E9RX TIL that in 1914 Henry Ford more than doubled his workers wages to $5 a day, business leaders called him a socialist but Ford’s profits jumped 200% and Ford factories were 5 times more productive than other automotive companies.
7rjY7 TIL about Francesco Corbetta. He brought the guitar to the rest of the world and was one of the first people to write complex plucked music for the instrument. If it wasn’t for him, the guitar would be a folk instrument restricted to Spain and Italy.
W77V9 TIL about the “true history”. A short satirical novel written in the 100s by Lucian of samosata that has been stated by some to be the oldest Sci-fi novel in history. It features Lucian travelling to the moon, getting embroiled in a war between the moon and sun and meeting the heroes of the illiad.
9wPXM TIL of J.W.H.T. Douglas, an English cricket player from the early 1900s, who drowned when the ship he was sailing on crashed into another. The captains of the ships were brothers, and were attempting to wish each other a Merry Christmas in passing when one rammed the other in heavy fog.
nLLb TIL Due to their intelligence, in some countries it is illegal to perform surgery on octopuses without anesthesia