› added 6 years ago

350

TIL In the late Middle Ages, books were so valuable that libraries would chain them to the bookcase. This was widely practiced until the 18th century.

Read more smithsonianmag.com

via reddit.com

b6XVN TIL about the Doll's Head Trail in Atlanta today. It's known for its eerie collection of doll heads and body parts
b9Mda TIL the Mormon Church maintains a $100 billion investment fund meant for religious, education, and charitable purposes, exceeding the combined net worths of the world's largest university endowment (Harvard University) and the world's largest philanthropic foundation (Gates Foundation)
epyE6 TIL a 2023 study set out to determine if penile length is in decline like sperm counts & testosterone levels. It compiled data from 75 studies, conducted between 1942-2021, that reported on the penile length of 55,761 men & found that the average erect penis actually increased 24% over 29 years.
QKy9 TIL that Alec Guinness, the actor who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original trilogy, hated the film and described it as “fairy tale rubbish” and persuaded George Lucas to kill off Obi-Wan because he “couldn’t go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines” and he “had enough of the mumbo jumbo”.
W7aK8 TIL: Algeria during the 1840 War, French troops had a drink prepared with coffee syrup and water. The drink was brought to France, it's called a mazagran named after the town. In the 1990s, Starbucks and PepsiCo made mazagran carbonated, but failed, leading to the creation of the frappucino.