› added 7 years ago

138

TIL Stalin saved the Chinese written script by talking Mao out of completely replacing it with full scale romanization

Read more pinyin.info

via reddit.com

nD4d TIL that YouTube had to update their view count from 32-bit to 64-bit solely because Gangnam Style had too many views.
R5Dy7 TIL that in 2011 a resident of Atherton, California called police to report a strange light in the sky. Police were able to determine that the strange light was the moon.
b8Ja TIL 3M engineers inadvertently built a force field under a huge roll of fast moving tape strong enough to act like an impenetrable wall.
xV4N7 TIL The Ming Dynasty did not have the Ancient Chinese Secret Commercial, much less the Calgon. They use artificial alkali to clean their clothes. This gives us an idea of what detergent the ancient Chinese used. A very good Ming Dynasty blog post.
nnv9 TIL Corgi’s are (still used in some parts of the USA) used to herd cattle as they are too short to be kicked by cows.