› added 12 years ago

79

TIL three times as many left-handed people have schizophrenia, bipolar disease or autism.

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Oo141 TIL that Joseph Guillotin, who proposed the idea of the guillotine as a less painful method of execution, was born prematurely because his mother was in distress after hearing the screams of a man being tortured to death.
Brmme TIL Before dentures were invented, teeth were pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers for use as prosthetics. In the 1780s an ivory denture with human teeth could cost over £100.
OGgea TIL that an undefined number of rats, accused of destroying barley crops in 16th-century France, had a lawyer named Barthélemy de Chasseneuz. He cleverly sought delays, citing rats' age and health, and convinced the town to curfew their cats, but lost as the cats still ate the rats.
J1AkB TIL Teddy Roosevelt's mother was the inspiration for Scarlet O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.
oR477 TIL Prisoners of war in WW1 with physical disabilities who were deemed unfit for military service were sent to Switzerland to live in hotels.