› added 11 years ago

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Today I learned that the price of admission for a zoo in 18th century England was a dog or a cat – they were fed to the lions.

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WkAA4 TIL that Babalu, Ricky Ricardo's signature song on I Love Lucy, is a tribute to an Afro-Cuban god, Babalu-Aye, one of the seven main gods of Santeria.
lp6A TIL ‘patient zero’ of last year’s West African ebola outbreak was a Guinean child who played with bats residing in a hollow cola tree. It is unknown whether the bats were the ultimate source of the infection since either by coincidence or as a result of that public warning, the tree was burnt down.
0d1gL TIL unlike other ex-British parliaments, the ruling party of Newfoundland's MPs sit to the left of the Speaker rather than the right - a tradition dating to the 1850s when the heaters were located on that side
PBoG TIL of Yang Kyoungjon, a Korean soldier who fought in the Imperial Japanese Army, captured and forced into the Soviet Red Army, and later recaptured and forced into the German Wehrmacht during World War II, eventually being captured and freed by paratroopers of the US army in 1944.
XEKaE TIL women's suffrage activists burned down the Orchid Houses at London's world famous Kew Gardens in the early 1900s, leaving behind a note that said "votes for women." They were never caught.