› added 10 years ago

100

TIL that poisoned Halloween candy is mostly urban legend and there haven’t be any deaths as a result of stranger poisoning.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

gMp09 TIL when we set one specific goal, people will tend to optimize for that objective regardless of the consequences. This is also known as Goodhart’s Law which says, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
X0E8E TIL Dan Frost, a German scientist, was able to make diamonds from peanut butter.
l7lj1 TIL that the Aryan Brotherhood and the Manson Family considered joining forces when they were in prison together, but the partnership fell through when the Aryan Brotherhood took offense at the murder of Sharon Tate.
m1Ydp TIL Tom Seaver was named on 425 out of 430 ballots for the Baseball Hall of Fame. 3 were blank as a protest against Pete Rose being ineligible. One was sent by a writer recovering from surgery who did not notice Seaver's name and one never voted for any player in their first year of eligibility.
ZQVp TIL of the saluting trap. British army conscripts would form a large group, then one by one walk to an officer. Each would salute, forcing him to salute back. The goal was to force the officer to salute as many soldiers as possible as fast as possible to make his arm sore.