› added 11 years ago

101

TIL the Venus Flytrap is named after its resemblance to a vagina.

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awKrN TIL that in 1997, a 50-pound pumpkin was speared atop a tower at Cornell University, 173 feet in the air. It stayed in place for months. Alumni are still trying to figure out who did it without being noticed -- and how.
NKEJ TIL in 1898 Andrew Carnegie offered President McKinley $20 million to free the Philippines instead of annexation. The US paid Spain $20 million to annex the Philippines at the end of the Spanish-American war, sparking the Philippine-American war that cost at least 200,000 Filipino civilian lives.
rRlpd TIL that two-time Medal of Honor recipient Major General Smedley Butler recommended in his 1935 book 'War is a Racket' that industries should be conscripted before soldiers to limit war profiteering after his experiences in the Banana Wars and WWI.
PYGWL TIL that the ancient Chinese emperor, Zhu Houzhao, had a fake shopping market built outside his palace so he could pretend to shop like the commoners did. It was staffed by his servants who he made dress up like merchants and commoners.
LkZDr TIL many 17th Century pirate ships had proto-democratic, anti-authoritarian rules for sharing wealth, keeping power in check, compensating for injuries, and including marginalized people.