› added 7 years ago

182

TIL dogs may have domesticated themselves. Historically, humans hunted wolves almost to extinction. This only changed when the boldest and friendliest scavenger wolves approached humans. Only then did the benefits of canine companionship become apparent.

Read more news.nationalgeographic.com

via reddit.com

xaY7 TIL: When slaves were freed in the USA, some towns in the south would arrest young black men for not having a job and then sell them to corporations like US Steel as slaves for the duration of their sentence
4kAj5 TIL that roughly in a million cicadas have blue eyes instead of red. There's an urban myth that they are worth thousands of dollars.
1pGW TIL that Snopes occasionally makes up urban legends, just to keep us on our toes.
8aQ7X TIL that Czechoslovakian car company, Tatra, sued Ferdinand Porsche for patent infringement, due to similarity in design between the VW Beetle and the Tatra V570. Hitler said he would "solve his problem," subsequently invading Czechoslovakia in 1938. The lawsuit was dropped soon after.
QNyXE TIL that after the Portuguese dictator Salazar went into coma, he was dismissed as Prime Minister. When he emerged from it and recovered lucidity, no one wanted to tell him he had been removed from power, instead he was allowed to "rule" in privacy until his death 2 years later