› added 6 months ago

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TIL the Shang Chinese (1600-1050 BCE) engaged in widespread systemic ritual human sacrifice, and Zhou kingdom abetted Shang in providing captive tributes as their vassal state

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0we9j TIL that the defunct Pan Am Airlines used to weigh their stewardesses before each flight, to ensure they didn't weigh over 140 pounds. On top of that, they had to be between 5'2 and 5'9, agree to retire by 32, not be married, no older than 27 to apply, not have children, and not be pregnant.
Y7GpZ TIL about Helios Flight 522. An engineer failed to set the pressurization system back to auto from manual, causing most (except 2 flight attendants) to lose consciousness. The auto-pilot reached Greece and stayed in a holding pattern until they ran out of fuel and crashed, killing all 121 onboard.
oBPYY TIL the reason why medicine bottles are orange or light brown is because of its ability to prevent ultraviolet light from degrading the contents through photochemical reactions, while still letting enough visible light through the bottle for the contents to be seen.
9Y6DX TIL before police used fingerprints to identify individuals, they used a system called Bertillonage which used several measurements of different body parts. It lost popularity when Leavenworth prison had two inmates with the same name, measurements, and physical appearance.
BgoXL TIL General George S. Patton's heritage was part Mexican. The city of Yorba Linda is named after Patton's great-grandfather Bernardo Yorba, who was a prominent landowner in California before Mexico ceded California to the United States.