› added 10 years ago

31

TIL Jews are stereotyped as “cheap” because in the Middle Ages the Catholic Church forbade Christians to lend money with interest and Jews were legally restricted to certain occupations, so many Jews became “Money Lenders” and were subsequently labeled as greedy and money-mad.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

lpV5 TIL the 16th century monk Giordano Bruno proposed that stars were distant suns surrounded by exoplanets that could contain life. He was sentenced to death by the same man who sentenced Galileo to death.
5Yrv9 TIL in 1979 when the Skylab re-entry approached the San Francisco Examine offered $10,000 to the first person to deliver a piece to them within 72hrs knowing it wasn't heading toward the USA. A 17yr old Aussie collected a piece, jumped on a plane with no passport or luggage and collected his prize.
pYeAp TIL that WW2 British General Bernard Montgomery made a bet with Walter Bedell Smith, that if he could capture Sfax by April 1943, then he would get a Flying Fortress. Montgomery did so and when Smith tried to laugh it off, went to Eisenhower to get his Flying Fortress.
LQOK9 TIL that if every US citizen consumed the recommended amount of daily fruits and veggies that the world’s agriculture actually couldn’t support it
0w8Ep TIL of Chartreuse, a storied French liqueur with a recipe that dates back to the early 1600s. The recipe originated in an old alchemical textbook presented to an order of monks by an artillery marshal of the French army. The original order of monks retains brewing rights to this day.