› added 6 years ago

156

TIL Beekeeping has been going for thousands of years and it was wide spread in the Levant regions by 1500 BCE. The practice was so important for the local economies that in the Hittite laws the penalties for stealing a swam of bees or empty hive was about the same as the fine for stealing a sheep.

l7Boa TIL that the song “I Just Had Sex” by The Lonely Island is played “unironically” in public in countries such as Vietnam and Thailand; bandmate Akiva Schaffer noting “The nuance…would be lost if English wasn’t your first language”
MedEb TIL: The Trakehner breed of Prussian horses survived WW2 because an estate owner (Colonel Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten) escaped the Russian advance with 31 brood mares. He was home after being cashiered from the Wehrmacht for refusing to execute 15 captured American soldiers in Italy.
plZ8 TIL of the Voynich manuscript, a 246 page book that is filled with botanical illustrations along with written word that modern linguists have so far been incapable of deciphering. Attempts to identify the plants have likewise largely failed. Carbon dating places the book at around 1400 AD.
yQxKw TIL there’s no scientific difference between pigeons and doves — the difference boils down to linguistic traditions.
QJPgp TIL of the "Poe Toaster", an individual or individuals who, for over seventy years, on Edgar Allen Poe's birthday (January 19) would appear mysteriously and drink a cognac toast at the author's grave. He would also leave several roses in a "distinctive arrangement."