› added 8 years ago

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TIL that red velvet cake is really just chocolate cake, where the cocoa powder, vinegar, and buttermilk mixed together creates a chemical reaction to help give the cake a deep maroon color, that is often enhanced by extra food coloring

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wWXP TIL a Brazilian footballer staged his whole career for 24 years - he could barely kick a ball. One time he was forced to play as the team had no strikers. He was worried he would get exposed, so before the game he started a fight with a fan and as a result got sent off before the game even started.
69ylW TIL 1930 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, the second highest in US history, prompted retaliatory tariffs by many other countries and was a contributing factor to worsening the Great Depression
rRWVw TIL The vanilla orchid blooms for one day in a year and the flower is only fertile for 8-12 hours. Each flower must be pollinated by hand within that 12-hour window. Unsurprisingly vanilla is nearly as expensive as silver
BZly TIL when Anders Celsius invented the temperature scale, he put 100 degrees as the point for freezing and 0 degrees as the point for boiling. Another scientist, Carl Linnaeus, waited until Celsius had died to change the scale to the way we read it today.
ep8j4 TIL doctors used gene therapy to successfully treat 5 children born with profound genetic deafness. Within weeks of the treatment, the children—who had never heard sound before—were able to hear speech and even recognize the "location" of sounds.