› added 3 months ago

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TIL of the Ben Franklin Effect, "a psychological phenomenon in which people like someone more after doing a favor for them". The opposite is also true, people come to dislike others to whom they have done wrong

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6EkvZ TIL London Taxi drivers have to memorize ~25,000 streets (called "the Knowledge") in order to get licensed. A 2000 study found that they have larger hippocampi, a part of the brain associated with learning and memory.
D14PY TIL that Milton Hershey kept his employees working during the Great Depression by having them construct buildings in Hershey, PA including a school, arena and hotel. When a steam shovel was brought in for construction, Hershey told his foreman to get rid of the shovel and hire 40 men instead.
NorJ TIL the 1902 Saint-Pierre Volcano eruption killed all 35,000 people in the town except one man who survived because he was the worst prisoner and lived in a solitary confinement cell.
bV74 TIL “SOS” does not actually stand for anything; “save our souls” or “save our ships” are just simply misinterpreted backronyms. SOS was simply chosen for its convenient communication.
8aGA4 TIL that Mao Zedong ordered mass genocide of Sparrows which caused the ecological imbalance as pests and bugs increased rapidly which resulted in less produce which further caused Great Chinese Famine which killed 20-45 million people due to starvation.