› added 11 years ago

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TIL A moldy cantaloupe in Illinois in 1941 was found to contain the highest quality penicillin, after a worldwide search.

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470J TIL Starboard means “steer"board, which is the side of the steering oar on the right side since most people are right-handed. Naturally in that case, the left-side will be where you dock with the "Port”.
p8yQZ TIL that because Taco Bell is not well known outside the United States, the movie Demolition Man has every spoken/graphic mention of "Taco Bell" removed and replaced with "Pizza Hut" for international releases.
8aRD8 TIL that in the late 80’s, Nintendo partnered with Sony to produce the “Nintendo PlayStation”. After a licensing agreement went bad, Sony independently marketed the console under their own name and the rest is history.
Y7vAW TIL green coloured clothing was rare in Europe up until arsenic-based green dyes were invented in the late-1700s. Before that, to create green the fabric first had to be dyed yellow and then dyed again with an expensive blue dye. Results with this process were inconsistent & hard to control.
W7LwB TIL Taking an old song and just changing the words to make a new song is called contrafactum. Earliest examples of contrafactum date to the 9th century and a famous examples is "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow", 1800s adapted from "Marlborough Has Left for the War", 1700s.