› added 5 years ago

185

TIL about the Erfurt latrine disaster in 1184. A party of nobles gathered in a room within the Church of St. Peter in Erfurt, right above the latrine pit of the monks. Due to the weight of the party the floor of the room collapsed and up to 100 nobles died plummeting in the fecal pool.

Read more thefortweekly.com

via reddit.com

1aZE8 TIL that in an attempt to enforce Prohibition, the Prohibition Bureau began adding poison to industrial alcohol to prevent its consumption, killing between 10,000 and 50,000 people. This was supported by people like Wayne Wheeler, who argued that the victims had committed suicide by breaking the law
Z899v TIL: The female version of morning wood (or morning glory in Australian,) is "nocturnal clitoral tumescence."
Ny5M TIL Despite the health claims for gluten-free eating, there is no published experimental evidence to support such claims for the general population.
EnRX TIL that Thich Quang Duc, a monk who set himself on fire to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the Catholic church in Saigon, remained motionless and never made a sound as he was burning alive. His heart remained intact afterwards. The photo of him burning alive won the Pulitzer prize.
rRA8M TIL that the box office flop "Idiocracy" (2006) was released in as few theaters as possible by 20th Century Fox so as to not offend the negatively portrayed advertisers in the movie. Fox then planned, and succeeded, in recuperating its budget by purposefully making the movie garner a cult following