› added 7 years ago

126

TIL the last Emperor of Brazil Pedro II became ruler aged 5. He had a grim, lonely childhood studying for duty. He won 3 wars, turned Brazil into a global power & abolished slavery. After 58 years he grew weary, accepting a military coup. He lived his last days alone in Europe on very little money.

W7QxB TIL about “Turkey Twizzlers”, pig-tail shaped fried meat snacks that were beloved despite being only 34% turkey, and served in schools in the UK until 2005 when celebrity chef Jamie Oliver encouraged the British government to controversially ban on them and other unhealthy snacks in school lunches.
9W7B TIL; Porcupines forage in trees but are bad climbers “in one study of porcupine skeletons in museums, 35 percent had healed fractures consistent with falling”
D1XVJ TIL In 2014 two chemists co-authored a paper describing all those consumer products appropriately labelled as “chemical free”. The paper was blank.
X0L4R TIL up to 20 percent of salmons raised in fish farms are depressed or suicidal. They have been measured to have similar serotonin levels as depressed mammals and will refuse to swim around or eat until they starve to death.
wLWL8 TIL of the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash, where the co-pilot deliberately crashed the plane into a mountainside after locking the captain out of the cockpit. The co-pilot had hidden the fact his doctor had been treating him for suicidal tendencies and declared him "unfit to work". 150 people died.