› added 11 years ago

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TIL that IBM leased punchcard machines for high fees to the Nazis that allowed them to catalog and identify the Jewish population via censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing

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wM8M TIL The first mention of Muhammad in the West comes from a discussion between Byzantine Christian and Jew written shortly after Muhammad’s death in 632. It says,“He is deceiving. For do prophets come with sword and chariot?You will discover nothing true from the said prophet except human bloodshed”
a8PnM TIL that despite it being usually assumed that Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was based on Ed Gein, the film's writer Tobe Hooper had only vaguely heard of him. Hooper was inspired by a pre-med friend of his from college who wore a cadaver's face to a party as a joke.
D1LBY TIL that ultrasound, thought to lie outside of the human hearing range, can be detected by listeners when it is played in combination with sound in the audible range. The mechanism for this is unknown, but in June 2000, researchers verified it by using brain activity scans.
Lkdg0 TIL the actor who played Furio on the Sopranos once discovered a painting in a museum had been mislabeled. He bought it for $70k and it ended up being worth $10 million.
XbPX TIL South Korea’s national drink is soju, a clear alcohol, typically made from rice or barley, with an alcohol content of about 20 percent and a government-mandated price of about $1 per bottle, so all citizens can afford it.