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TIL the world’s oldest paycheck- dating back 5,000 years in Mesopotamia- shows that workers were paid in beer.

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via reddit.com

XlVQ TIL Valentines Day started life as a fertility festival where two men wearing animal skin would run around slapping passers by with lengths of goat skin.
ZNRG TIL that the world almost came to an end in 1983 when a malfunctioning Soviet satellite falsely reported multiple launches of American ICBMs to a Russian bunker. Citing a “funny feeling in my gut,” the bunker commander directly disobeyed military protocol by not ordering retaliatory strikes
W7k88 TIL: About the naval term - broom at the masthead. It meant that a vessel had made a clean sweep of enemy vessels. Ships literally hung a broom from the mast of a ship. Commonly used in WW2, it dates back to the 17th century.
krLd TIL in their “coming of age” ritual, aboriginals in Australia cut a “birth control” hole in the base of the boy’s penis and insert into it a splinter to keep it from closing. Urine and semen come out of the hole unless the subincision is plugged with a finger.
4PRa TIL the musician Prince, a Jehovah’s Witness since 2001, occasionally leaves his gated community to go door knocking.