› added 9 years ago

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TIL Until 1616 coffee was essentially a monopoly run by Yemen. Merchants were forbidden to sell live coffee plants or seeds. That changed when Pieter van der Broecke, a Dutch merchant, stole coffee seeds and brought them back to Holland. 40 years later coffee had traveled as far as Sri Lanka.

D10Rv TIL that real dead bodies were used on the set of “Apocalypse Now.” The man who supplied them turned out to be a grave robber and was arrested.
mxoGE TIL In 1992, a hurricane hit Hawaii where they were filming "Jurassic Park." Spielberg's crew had to be evacuated via helicopter; the pilot, Fred Sorenson, had previously met Spielberg while playing the pilot in the opening scene of "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
epwGL TIL about "The Pearl": An underground pornographic magazine issued monthly between 1879 and 1880. Its contents were three serial erotic tales simultaneously, devoted to sex in high society, incest, and flagellation. It was shut down by the British authorities for violating standards of obscenity.
rRkAx TIL Spiders can sense electrical currents in the air and use them to launch themselves upward, traveling up to hundreds of miles. Occasionally a “mass ballooning” occurs, where so many spiders descend from the sky it looks like snow
jNZgv TIL - Handshakes where originally used to make sure that the other person wasn't carrying a weapon. The hand clasp proved their hands were empty and the shake proved there was nothing in their sleeves.