› added 3 years ago

90

TIL to prevent civil wars the Ottomans had all heirs to the throne imprisoned in a palace called the "the cage". Due to their isolation, most heirs were unprepared for life and had mental illnesses. Mehmet VI (the last sultan) spent the first 56 years of his life in isolation.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

wE56 TIL native speakers of tone languages (such as Mandarin and Vietnamese) are much more likely to have ‘perfect pitch’ and can identify musical notes much more accurately than native speakers of non-tone languages, such as English.
9Y5eM TIL during the very first direct presidential election in Singapore (1993), one of the only two candidates was there only to make the election contested, and told supporters not to campaign for him. He still got 41.3% of the vote
wkpP TIL that the Captain of the HMS Beagle nearly rejected Charles Darwin as a passenger on the basis that the shape of Darwin’s nose indicated a lack of determination
dDwLE TIL: The Greek intellectual Hypatia was accused of witchcraft in March 415 CE where a mob seized her from her carriage, dragged her into a church, carved out her eyes and her living flesh with oyster shells, then tore her limb from limb.
MegL8 TIL during the tornado outbreak of 1974, forecasters in Indiana, frustrated because they could not keep up with all of the simultaneous tornado activity, put the entire state under a blanket tornado warning. This was the only time in U.S. history that an entire state was under a tornado warning.