› added 4 years ago

244

TIL about the world's oldest cured ham. It was overlooked on its hook at Gwaltney Foods in 1902 and hung from a rafter for twenty years. The company owner then declared it his pet ham, put a collar on it, and took it to exhibitions. It's now in a museum in Isle of Wight County, VA. It has a Twitter.

Read more atlasobscura.com

via reddit.com

G5n4 TIL: The Speaker of the House during Watergate could have stalled the VP confirmation and impeached Nixon which would have made himself POTUS, but he concluded that, as a Democrat, he had no right to a Presidency that the American people had entrusted by election to a Republican.
wLBNM TIL That the chair has been around for nearly 5,000 years. The earliest example in the form of a sculpture from the Cycladic Islands at approximately 2,700 B.C. which was prior to Egyptian chairs, which were typically stools. Chairs with arms and backrests implied elite status.
x6AXg TIL: During his opening of Japan to the America's through a show of force, Matthew C. Perry, during the signing event, followed the kabuki play with US military band music... and a blackface minstrelsy. He got $20,000 at the time for his work in Japan.
kON9E TIL Garth Brooks holds the record for having the most diamond-certified records, having 9 of them - more than Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd put together.
x64l0 TIL In 1962, a "laughter epidemic" broke out in Tanzania and spreading to over 1,000 people. This bizarre phenomenon even led to the temporary closure of 14 schools.