› added 5 years ago

86

TIL about Chai Ling, a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. She advocated to continue protesting until a bloodshed would change China, but when interviewed before the incident about whether she herself would attend the protests, she answered no, cause she wanted to live.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

mxZlM TIL "ZIG-ZAG Man" of rolling papers fame is based on the story of a French North African soldier (Zouave) whose smoking pipe was shattered by a stray bullet during the battle of Sevastopol so he rolled his tobacco using a piece of paper torn from a musket cartridge.
wRE1 TIL that when rabbits with the dwarf gene breed, it occasionally results in a ‘peanut’, a bunny with two dwarf genes. Sadly, a peanut bunny will never grow, and will always die less than two weeks after birth, usually in under 3 days.
0wwd5 TIL about the Dunbar’s number. It is a theoretical upper limit of the people one can maintain stable relationships with. Suggested between 100 and 250. So if a town’s population is below the Dunbar’s number, it is more likely to have harmony and peace that a larger town or city.
OrQX TIL Leonardo Da Vinci’s last words were: “I have offended God and mankind. My work did not reach the quality it should have.”
mxBNR TIL buffets are called "vikings" in Japan. This is because a Japanese restaurant manager went to Sweden and liked smörgåsbords so much he copied the idea at his restaurant. This Swedish word was too hard to pronounce in Japanese, so the word "vikings" was used instead after a employee suggested it.