› added 4 years ago

131

TIL one of the weirdest experiments Isaac Newton did was to stick a bodkin (a long sewing needle) into his eye socket to probe the nature of color and experience other visual phenomena

Read more nature.com

via reddit.com

jEEp TIL that France lost so many workers during its failed attempt to dig the Panama Canal, that for a time their project’s MAIN source of income was selling the corpses (pickled in brine water) to medical schools all over the world as cadavers.
kOe01 TIL that Albania, the only European country with a Muslim majority at the time, had their Jewish population triple during WWII due to a code of honor called 'Besa' where it was an honor to protect those in refuge. Almost no Jews were handed over to the Germans with exception to one family.
QV4L TIL that farmers put magnets into the stomach of cows so that they attract metal parts the cow accidentally ate to prevent them from becoming lodged in the animal’s tissue(which is know as hardware disease)
vPd6x TIL about Su Kong Tai Djin, the Kung-Fu Werewolf, a Shaolin monk born in 1849 with Hypertrichosis (a condition causing full body hair growth). Abandoned in a forest by his parents, he was raised by Shaolin monks. He practiced by fighting bears and defended the coast from pirates.
d8J9Z TIL about the "Smiley Face Murders" a series of mysterious deaths that have taken place over the last 30 years across the Eastern US in which healthy college-aged males are found dead in rivers with smiley faces spray painted nearby.