› added 3 years ago

199

TIL that George Gershwin was in psychoanalytic therapy for several years for “aberrant” behavior, olfactory hallucinations, loss of coordination while eating, and severe headaches, and it wasn’t until he died that they figured out he had a brain tumor.

Read more pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

via reddit.com

M7DNB TIL that in 1748 Carl Linnaeus proposed the idea of a clock made of flowers. It would use plants that open or close their flowers at particular times of day to indicate the time. The accuracy would be limited because flowering times are affected by weather, seasons and latitude.
Wk8mo TIL: When public health officials first began banning the dumping of feces in the street, they were still working under miasma theory, that bad smells were what caused diseases like cholera. The germ theory of disease wasn’t developed until 1880.
Y7k6A TIL on March 15, 2011, 51-year-old William Melchert-Dinkel went online under screen names like "Cami" and "Falcongirl" encouraging people to commit suicide. Those who were interested he would instruct them step by step. He admitted to assisting in the deaths of 5 people but was only convicted for 2.
wAj8 TIL Tokyo has a self-declared superhero who calls himself Mangetsu Man. He keeps his identity secret by wearing a purple bodysuit, with a big yellow smiley head; and his self-described job is to keep the city trash free.
wLnKM TIL two men dressed as Batman and Captain America were teaching kids at an event when they noticed a nearby home on fire. They ran to the house, rushed inside, and rescued a cat that had inhaled smoke. "Batman" gave the cat mouth-to-mouth breaths until it recovered, then it hissed and "freaked out."