› added 1 year ago

143

TIL some Ancient Mesopotamian texts are… spicy (click LAOS 4, 13)

Read more oracc.museum.upenn.edu

via reddit.com

Zp4Qo TIL that children in ancient China learned to write from "Thousand Character Text", a 1000-word poem where the characters do not repeat and cover everything from philisophy to astrology.
N79ae TIL SOS doesn't actually stand for anything at all, it's just very distinctive and easy to write in Morse code
dD5LQ TIL: The US developed the chemical compound Cyanogen Chloride for use in WW2 against Japan. It is a highly toxic blood agent that could penetrate gas masks. Truman decided against using it and opted for the atom bomb. It is now listed in the Chemical Weapons Convention and has never been deployed.
E1jgP TIL that an American tea importer Thomas Sullivan accidentaly invented the tea bag when he sent samples to customers in silk pouches.
8ebKK TIL that when Dan Shechtman discovered quasiperiodic crystals in 1982, he got mocked and shamed. Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling spoke of the discovery, saying "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists." In 2011 Shechtman won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery.