› added 4 years ago

100

TIL: In the 1800s, Mrs Favell Lee Mortimer set out to write an ambitious guide to all the nations on Earth. She had never set foot outside Shropshire. She was horribly misinformed about virtually every topic she turned her attention to. And she was prejudiced against foreigners.

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owW7 TIL Halitosis is a made up word that was invented in order to sell more Listerine.
rN5Wo TIL William Gebhardt invented chili powder as we know it today in the back room café of a saloon that had alligator pits and badger fights.
65Q8 TIL there is a museum in North Korea dedicated to remembering a mass murder of communist sympathizers during the Korean War
OG6RY TIL when the 1984 film “Red Dawn” was in production, it was reported that a T-72 tank built for the film was such a precise replica, that while it was being carted around Los Angeles, two CIA intelligence officers followed the tank to the movie studio wanting to know where it had come from.
6EWEm TIL during The Great Purge, citizens couldn't sleep at night because they were terrified of a knock on the door, meaning they would be arrested and sent to a labor camp. Even Stalin's own mother fainted after she heard a knock on the door, although Stalin had only sent bodyguards to protect her.