› added 5 years ago

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TIL about the 'Children's Crusade', where a 12 year old managed to get a following of 30,000 children to attempt to reclaim Jerusalem from the Muslims. They were unable to cross the Mediterranean sea and were sold into slavery by merchants offering free passage on their boats.

R7QDj TIL that evolutionary musicologists believe that human ancestors evolved musical ability to help signal alliances between rival groups, long before advanced languages emerged, among other theories.
0wad5 TIL that Spain won basketball gold at the 2000 Paralympics but most of the team wasn't disabled. The coach asked the team to slow their scoring because they were playing too well. When journalists became suspicious, they were encouraged to grow beards and wear hats so as not to be recognisable.
D16Ap TIL Victorian London was frantically looking for a solution for what to do with all their dead, and Architect Thomas Wilson proposed the Metropolitan Sepulchre, a 94 story "Death Pyramid." It would have dominated London's skyline and housed up to 5 million bodies, and even received financial support
gA19 TIL that if someone has debt and dies, their family does not have to pay it off. But some banks will try to get them to anyway in case they think they need to.
vPRGL TIL of in 1748, the first known artificial refrigeration was demonstrated by William Cullen. But the history of the ice makers begins with Oliver Evans, an American inventor who designed the first refrigeration machine in 1805 because Mr. Cullen never used his discovery for practices.