› added 7 years ago

175

TIL that Dr. Thomas Midgely, inventor of both leaded-gasoline and chlorofluorocarbon with the best of intentions, devised an ingenious system of pulleys and strings to pull his polio-stricken body out of bed, which tangled around his neck, and killed him.

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aanL TIL: When you speak inside your mind small muscles in your throat mimic the formation of each word, and NASA is working on a machine that would detect these muscle movements and transcribe them to words.
nYDo TIL: that during the black death, several French cities ran out of places to bury the dead, so Pope Clement VI had to consecrate the entire Rhone River so that it could be considered holy ground and bodies could be thrown into it.
R5k9Q TIL: The US National Anthem has 4 verses, but we only sing the first one
xV9wb TIL that chocolate milk was made popular by an Irishman named Sir Hans Sloane when he was visiting Jamaica and was offered a cocoa powder drink by the villagers and thought it tasted foul, so he mixed it with milk instead and brought it back to England where it was sold as medicine.
Jj68 TIL there is a juice bar in Vernal, Utah that charges you a dollar extra for a smoothie if you claim that you are a liberal.