› added 8 years ago

93

TIL That in the 1800’s there was a condition called Dysaesthesia aethiopica, which proposed a theory for the cause of laziness among slaves. The ‘cure’ was more lashings and a hard days labour in the sun.

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

ADM54 TIL: in 1898, Jim White saw bats flying into a tiny hole in the ground, so he crawled down in. The hole led to a cave so big that as he explored it's depths his lantern would burn out and he had to find his way back in pitch blackness by memory. It is now the national park known as Carlsbad Caverns.
E186p TIL that if you took out all of the empty space from between and within the atoms making up each human being, the entire human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube.
OoQ5R TIL that anatomist Antonio Valsalva sometimes tasted the fluids of cadavers he performed autopsies on. Quote: "Gangrenous pus does not taste good...leaving the tongue tingling unpleasantly for the better part of the day"
9mKr TIL that Leonardo da Vinci invented the Miter Lock in 1497, which is still in use today including in the Panama and Suez Canals.
yQ1Ja TIL about the "Well to Hell" hoax. The hoax suggested a wealthy Russian man drilled a hole many miles deep into the Earth eventually finding a cavern, and with heat resistant equipment, recorded the screams of the damned. The hoax travelled the globe.