› added 10 years ago

252

TIL in AD 1378 an iconoclastic Sufi Muslim chiseled off the nose of the Great Sphinx of Giza after noticing that area farmers worshiped the monument in hopes of reaping a good harvest. He was subsequently lynched by the angry locals for vandalism.

Read more weburbanist.com

via reddit.com

LpLP TIL Canadians say “sorry” so much that in 2009 the apology act was put in place stating that the word “sorry” is no longer an admission of guilt.
YlNG TIL on a by weight basis, there is more gold in a smartphone than there is in gold ore. It takes a ton of ore to get 1g of gold. But you can get the same amount from recycling the materials in 41 mobile phones.
WD8Y Til that A&W’s third-pound burger which had the same price as McDonald’s Quarter Pounder and which beat it in blind taste tests supposedly failed because consumers didn’t know that a third was bigger than a fourth
71kb TIL that 1835 was the only time in U.S. history when the country was debt free, when Andrew Jackson paid off what he called “the national curse”. It lasted exactly one year.
KOrG TIL the crowd at the first guillotine execution is reported to have yelled “Bring back our wooden gallows”, because a guillotine was insufficiently entertaining.