› added 7 years ago

1129

TIL when Gandhi's wife was stricken with pneumonia, doctors told her husband that a shot of penicillin would heal her, he refused to have "alien" medicine used and she died. Soon after, Gandhi caught malaria and, relenting from the standard applied to his wife, allowed doctors to save his life.

Read more thecrimson.com

via reddit.com

L1Yr TIL: In 1995, St. Jude’s Hospital received an anonymous letter with a $1 million winning McDonald’s Monopoly game piece. Although it was against the rules to transfer prizes, McDonald’s honored it even after learning that the piece was sent by an individual involved in an embezzlement scheme.
B0Nx TIL that the “Vaportini” is a device whereby users heat alcoholic beverages and become intoxicated by inhaling the resulting vapors
wojM8 TIL that in 2020, a bizarre new type of extinct deep-sea plesiosaur was discovered in Norway. Despite being 5 to 5.5 meters (16-18 ft) long, the marine reptile's head was tiny, being only 20 centimeters (8 inches) long. It also had a small brain, extremely large eyes, and likely ate squid.
M74xW TIL In 1864 during the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia, a Union and Confederate soldier got into a fistfight to settle their disagreement on who was the other's prisoner. The brawl made both armies pause the entire battle just so they could watch them fight.
eXMJ TIL Henry Ford was a big admirer of Adolf Hitler, and continued to do business with in Nazi Germany, including building war materiel and using French POWs as slave labor. Hitler also admired Ford, keeping a life size portrait of him next to his desk.