› added 6 months ago

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TIL: That Debtors Prison existed up until 1867 where people were incarcerated for being unable to pay their commercial debts

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awN5A TIL: Your ring to digit finger ratio has been studied as correlated with your testosterone / estrogen exposure at birth and various other skills, personality traits, cognitive abilities, academic performance, and behavior.
e06p5 TIL that the drink Crystal Pepsi was killed in the US due to a "kamikaze" marketing campaign by Coke. Coke created the drink Tab Clear, designed to be unpopular, and marketed it so that consumers would conflate the two drinks even though they were not similar. It worked and both were pulled in 1994.
6ENo8 TIL a recent study showed that subjects preferred to give themselves electric shocks rather than occupy themselves with their own thoughts for 15 minutes. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative
7pOX TIL that people are ticklish where we are must vulnerable to attack (behind the knees, armpits, etc.) Our response to being tickled trains us to quickly block those locations as if in a defensive fight.
p8emG TIL President John F. Kennedy was a known speed reader and was rumored to be one of the fastest speakers in the world. Reportedly, he would read six newspapers cover to cover each morning and in an interview spoke 327 words in just a minute.