› added 12 years ago

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TIL cake mix used to contain powdered egg, and only needed water; Betty Crocker made the decision to take it out and sales skyrocketed. Due to housewives feeling that the simple step of adding a real egg somehow made the cake more homemade/authentic, and gave them a sense of contribution.

XEv1E TIL that the word Luddite comes from the radical 19th century workers who destroyed textile machinery as a form of protest. Over time, the term has come to mean one opposed to industrialisation, automation, computerisation, or new technologies in general.
9V9r TIL ‘Burglary’ specifically referred to breaking into a house at night. During the daytime it was called housebreaking.
KO5RE TIL female gladiators or "gladiatrices" existed in ancient Rome, but were rare because it was considered unwomanly. One gladiatrix of note was a woman who fought wild boars with a spear while topless, and who would squat to urinate in front of a stunned crowd.
oB16E TIL neutron star PSR J1748-2446 is the fastest spinning celestial object in the universe. The star rotates 716 times every second, so its equator moves at about 25% the speed of light. It is also 50 trillion times the density of lead and has a magnetic field a trillion times stronger than the Sun’s.
N7gb8 TIL in the early 1900s, Dolly Korschel kept a secret lover in her attic for years, had the lover kill her husband after a fight, continued keeping the lover in her attic, and was charged with murder 8 years later but set free because there was a 7-year statute of limitations on murders at the time.