› added 10 years ago

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TIL: With exposure times of half a minute, Victorian mothers wanting a portrait of their children had to disguise themselves as chairs, couches and curtains to hold them still.

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via reddit.com

oR477 TIL Prisoners of war in WW1 with physical disabilities who were deemed unfit for military service were sent to Switzerland to live in hotels.
eplJL TIL that all carnivorous mammals can be divided into "cat-like" or "dog-like".
9w8bp TIL in the UK alone, some 7 million Halloween costumes are binned each year, equivalent of 2000 tons of plastic, and globally less than 13% of material inputs to clothing manufacture are recycled and only 1% of clothing textiles are recycled into new clothes. According to The Fairyland Trust.
X0wA6 TIL of the Cypress of Kashmar, a tree said to have been planted by the son-in-law of the prophet Zoroaster, that at 1400 years of age was chopped down by the Abbasid Caliph Motavakol because he wanted it brought to him and "reassembled" in Baghdad. He was assassinated soon after it was chopped down.
neGkP TIL about the "Murder Castle", a building owned by the serial killer H. H. Holmes. This complicated building included maze-like hallways, seemingly leading to nowhere airtight rooms used as elaborate torture rooms, acid vats a crematorium and more. It is suspected that Holmes had around 200 victims.