› added 12 years ago

115

TIL president Hoover and his wife both spoke Mandarin Chinese and would use it in the White House to foil eavesdroppers

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

eb0D TIL Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, was gay, as well as NASA’s first LGBT+ astronaut (that we know of).
nebZB TIL An ancient form of cheesecake may have been a popular dish in ancient Greece even prior to Romans' adoption of it with the conquest of Greece. The earliest attested mention of a cheesecake is by the Greek physician Aegimus (5th century BCE), who wrote a book on the art of making cheesecakes.
1a5Nr TIL the reason we know what cyanide tastes like is because an Indian man, MP Prasad who committed suicide left a hastily scrawled note describing the taste. "Doctors, potassium cyanide. I have tasted it. It burns the tongue and tastes acrid," he wrote, solving a long unanswered question.
0bJM TIL A woman (registered nurse) was watching the show “Flip or Flop” on HGTV and noticed a lump on hosts neck. Emailed production company to make them aware and host ended up having thyroid cancer and didn’t know.
R7Pdl TIL Mary Magdalene's tomb was excavated in 1279 and today her intact skull is kept in a glass dome in a crypt outside Provence, France.