› added 4 years ago

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TIL In 1907 Standard Oil developed the the Mei Foo kerosene lamp, which translates in Chinese to “beautiful confidence.” In its first year, more than 850,000 lamps were sold in China at around 7.5 cents each, and could stay lit for more than 240 hours on a single gallon of kerosene.

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OG7bg TIL that the Austrian football club Rapid Vienna won the 1941 German championship during Nazi rule
v1Pp4 TIL that an author wrote 'Vienna without Jews' in 1922. 16 years later, jews were hunted down under Hitler's command
Gv1E TIL : You can’t scan and print banknotes because there is a particular pattern drawn on them, called EURion constellation, that helps image software detect the presence of banknotes in a digital image and prevent counterfeiting.
OGMBe TIL that arabs had banned the export of unroasted coffee beans so that everyone would have to continue buying it from them but an Indian saint Budan smuggled 7 seeds in his beard risking capital punishment thereby starting the coffee production in India and ending arabian monopoly on it.
D6Jv TIL the world’s oldest beer advertisement was on a Mesopotamian Stone Tablet dated approximately 4000 BC. It read “Drink Elba, the beer with the heart of a lion” and was accompanied by a “large breasted woman holding goblets of beer in each hand”