› added 11 months ago

155

TIL in 1590, starving Parisians ground human bones into bread

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via reddit.com

6lMY TIL that pizza wasn’t popular in the U.S. until after WWII, when U.S. troops (including Dwight Eisenhower) returned home from occupied Italy with an appreciation for Italian pizza.
X0vyP TIL: the cover of Caldor's 1998 "Toy Book" holiday ad featured two boys playing Scrabble. One of the words on the board was "RAPE."
QJxoe TIL that Julius Caesar is named after the caesarean section, not the other way around. Caesar's ancestor got that last name because he was "ab utero caeso" (lit. "cut from the womb"). Also the story that Julius was born via C-section is a myth.
x6J6w TIL that soldiers in WWI wore medieval body armor (which hadn't been used for 400 years) to protect themselves during close-quarters trench warfare.
9YQY7 TIL about the hidden holocaust, better known as the "Congo Horrors" caused by King Leopold II of Belgium. The magnitude of the population fall over the period is disputed, but it is thought to be as high as 15 million people.