› added 7 years ago

75

TIL that to get Tyrian Purple, you had to boil thousands of snails just to get a few grams of pure dye of it.

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Nao1 TIL that we know what potassium cyanide tastes like, because an Indian scientist left a note describing its taste as he committed suicide. “Doctors, potassium cyanide. I have tasted it. It burns the tongue and tastes acrid,”
loJvr TIL New Line Cinema gambled their entire company on the success of the Lord of The Rings franchise, by committing to all three films for > $270M up front.
mQ1M TIL in the original Silent Hill video game, the fog covering the town was put in the game because of hardware limitations. Covering the town in fog meant that only the area surrounding the player at any given moment needed to be rendered
0waDN TIL A medieval French soldier climbed up a toilet into a besieged castle to let his army in. King John of England had specifically requested that toilet be installed for personal use during church services. The castle’s fall led to English loss of Normandy and the signing of the Magna Carta.
WkZe9 TIL many fingerprint scanners won't recognize the fingerprint of a dead person, as dead people's skin does not have the electrical conductance needed for such fingerprint scanners to work.