› added 9 years ago

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TIL Listerine was sold as a cure for gonorrhea in the 19th century. But it wasn’t a success until the 1920s, when it was pitched as a solution for bad breath. Listerine’s ads featured women turned off by their mate’s bad breath. Until that time, bad breath was not considered such a catastrophe.

1anp8 TIL In 2000 the University of Wisconsin photoshopped a black man's face onto the cover of an admission booklet to make them seem more diverse. He sued and won $10million for diversity initiatives.
5v09 TIL that a carrot farmer trying to cut back food waste (over half of carrots produced are too ugly for grocery shelves) carved & created the first batch of ‘baby carrots’ using a green bean cutter. 30 years later, these carrots account for 70 percent of all carrot sales
yQJae TIL in 2010, Philadelphia school authorities surreptitiously and remotely activated webcams embedded in school issued laptops the students were using at home in order to spy on the students. They even disciplined a student for his "improper" behavior at home.
KYkgB TIL Radiohead's name was inspired by a Talking Heads song titled "Radio Head" from their 1986 album True Stories. Yorke said the name "sums up all these things about receiving stuff ... It's about the way you take information in, the way you respond to the environment you're put in."
9wAPD TIL that surveillance and assessment mechanisms are often unobtrusively woven into video games, allowing companies to build detailed profiles of the people playing the game. Researchers say the level of privacy intrusion is comparable to dating apps and social media platforms.