› added 4 years ago

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TIL: Rosemary Kennedy (younger sister of John and Robert) was lobotomised at 23 to deal with mood swings and erratic behaviour. Her mother was informed of this decision after the procedure had taken place.

QJ1ke TIL that The International Kilogram, a cylinder of a platinum-iridium alloy is exactly 1 kilogram, and is locked in a vault southwest of Paris, that takes 3 keys to open. It has only been taken out on 3 separate occasions since it was created, almost 140 years ago.
b9oV7 TIL that Jordache, the company famous for skinny jeans in the 70s and 80s, now makes most of its money in real estate, hotel and restaurant chains and airlines
kOXJW TIL Richard Littler has been writing a blog of the history of Scarfolk, a fictional, supernatural-tinged town perpetually stuck in the 1970s. Littler presents the town's story through materials from the council's "archive": posters, pamphlets and packaging that reveal aspects of everyday life.
W7dwd TIL: Economist Michael Housman used to data from 30,000 employees to find correlations between their preferred browser and job performance. Employees who used Firefox/Chrome stay 15% longer and were 19% less likely to miss work and had happier customers than employees who used IE or Safari.
aKRy TIL that in 1982 3 men spent more than six months living on a billboard in an attempt to outlast the others to win a radio contest for a $18,000 home. One of the men was arrested half way into the contest for selling weed from on top of the billboard.