› added 11 years ago

167

TIL Since 1985 the number of people on welfare has fallen from 4 million to 2 million but the number of people receiving federal disability has risen from 2 million to 7 million

Read more apps.npr.org

via reddit.com

Y7x6d TIL about the surgical procedure hymenoplasty, which restores or repairs the hymen. It’s most often used by women living in cultures where it’s existence or nonexistence can be the difference between shaming, ostracism and in some cases death
5V7R9 TIL that in 2012 at the Emir of Kuwait International Grand Shooting Grand Prix, the winner was from Kazakhstan, and they played the parody national anthem from Borat by mistake, which mentions the potassium exports and the second-cleanest prostitutes in the area.
519p TIL: Gouda accounts for over half of the world’s cheese consumption.
pYwrN TIL about the Union Army Balloon Corps, a branch of the Union Army during the American Civil War. It employed a group of prominent American aeronauts and seven specially built, hydrogen balloons to perform aerial reconnaissance on the Confederate States Army.
0w6Rv TIL in 1900 A category 4 hurricane was raging through the Bahamas. The advanced weather stations in Cuba tried to inform the US Weather Bureau that it was headed west to Texas. They ignored the Cubans and claimed it was headed north instead. The hurricane hit Texas killing up to 12,000 people.