› added 11 years ago

178

TIL that Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, after serving two terms as President of the United States, sought and received his reinstatement as a General of the Army. Ike believed that history would hardly remember his service as President, but would never forget that he commanded the D-day invasion.

9wx7G TIL Victorian poet Robert Browning believed that a "twat" was an item of clothing worn by nuns, and included an infamous line about "cowls and twats" in one of his poems. He came to this conclusion after misinterpreting a vulgar rhyme which mentioned "old nuns' twats".
lkw7 TIL in 1998 Britain started requiring paracetamol (Tylenol) to be sold in 16 count blister packs instead of 100 count bottles. This reduced suicides from Tylenol overdoses by 43%
W76OY TIL that the earliest refutation of UFOs was written in the 9th century by Agobard of Lyon, who wrote against the claims of peasants that ‘sky sailors’ were coming to steal their crops in his treatise ‘On Hail and Thunder’
d8OwQ TIL The Anarchist logo isthe mixture of "A" for anarkhia "without ruler/authority" and "O" for "order and organization". Which is a reference to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's quote "as man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy"
woXW7 TIL that James Lovelock, an English scientist, performed experiments regarding the cryopreservation of small rodents. His work found that hamsters could successfully be revived with no adverse effects after having 60% of the fluids in their brain frozen. The hamsters were thawed using microwaves.