› added 12 years ago

82

TIL that there is DNA evidence proving that Polynesians visited the Americas (Chile) in the 1300s, well before Columbus ever reached the New World; there are also stories of Polynesians seeing Antarctica around the year 650, “a place of bitter cold where rock-like structures rose from a solid sea”

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

VB1lp TIL: IPAs came from beer being shipped from England to India in barrels, the beer needed higher alcohol and hop content to preserve it, so they created a new style of beer.
4kk5 TIL Pope Benedict VIII condemned cats as evil and had them burned by the thousands. This led to an explosion of the rat population and attributed to the effects of the Black Death
Y8Md TIL: In Soviet Union during 1991, voting “none of above” led to new elections with new candidates in 200 races. Boris Yeltsin later said the “none of the above” option “helped convince the people they had real power even in a rigged election, and [it] played a role in building true democracy.”
NXOpE TIL of the Moro Crater Massacre in The Phillipines, which included the murder of hundreds of women and children by US forces. Photos were taken at the scene where the soldiers smiled as skulls, rotting severed limbs, blown-out heads and dismembered torsos were piled up around them.
plb8 TIL that the inventor of Vaseline was such a firm believer in its medicinal properties that he claimed to have eaten a spoonful of it a day; During a bout of pleurisy in his 50s, he ordered his nurse to cover him from head to toe in the substance, and soon recovered. He lived to be 94.