› added 1 year ago

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TIL Whalebone corsets were not made of bone, but of baleen, a whale's filter plate.

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woRP TIL when Sequoyah invented the Cherokee syllabary (making reading and writing in Cherokee possible) it became the only time in recorded history that a member of a non-literate people independently created an effective writing system.
oBMYR TIL that "Where's Waldo?" was originally published as "Where's Wally?" in the United Kingdom--"Waldo" is the American adaptation of the series. Additionally, Wally was drawn smaller and smaller and the series continued, making him harder to find in subsequent books.
ADB6g TIL that "Strozzapreti" is a type of pasta, which roughly translates as "the priest strangler" because supposedly priests were so ravenous for the noodle they would eat too quickly and choke to death on it.
J1nEk TIL that actress Dame Margaret Rutherford's father killed his father by bludgeoning him to death with a chamberpot and was sent to a criminal lunatic asylum afterwards
781BL TIL trepanation involved drilling holes into the skull. Contrary to popular belief, not all patients subjected to it died. Archaeologists have found many skulls with partially healed openings, suggesting that some survived the procedure.