› added 4 years ago

75

TIL one of the first mass produced Treadmills were by Sir William Cubitt in 1818, who used it to torture inmates in jails of England. It consisted of 24 inmates side by side, with partitions. This pointless labor was meant to deter poor people from committing crimes to just get in jail for shelter.

Read more daily.jstor.org

via reddit.com

nedQB TIL that there is a form of telephone fraud called the "one ring scam," in which the scammer calls the victim via the area code (473) at times in which the victim is unable to take the call, and then when the victim calls back an automatic $20 fee is charged to their account for making the call.
wgm1 TIL a man kayaked from Germany to Australia between 1932-1939 only to arrive and be detained as a POW due to the outbreak of WW2
XE11D TIL American English is more homogeneous than British English. It is more difficult to tell where an American is from in the US than it is to tell where a Brit is from in the UK.
d8QB TIL Allan Moore’s 1986 graphic novel, “Watchmen” discusses “DUB music.” The character Ozymandias calls it “a sort of music of the future, a result of technological advances transcending the cultural barriers they set up”
MA9b TIL A man in 1938 agreed to have himself monitored on a electrocardiogram as he was executed to see the effects on his heart.