› added 3 years ago

123

TIL while walking in Manhattan’s Central Park that each lamppost has a set of numbers at the base. The first 2-3 numbers indicate the closest cross street, and the last number indicates what side of town you’re closest to. An odd number indicates you’re on the west side, and even means east.

Read more ny.curbed.com

via reddit.com

pYrLb TIL gerrymandering is named after a famous case where an 1812 district signed into law by Massachusetts Governor, Elbridge Gerry, resembled a salamander. A political cartoon published in the Boston Gazette dubbed it the "Gerry-mander".
rQko TIL when they were introduced in 1903, Triscuit crackers were advertised as “Baked by Electricity”
VgLB TIL: When Spirited Away won the Academy Award for Animation, Hayo Miyazaki personally chose not to attend the show because he “didn’t want to visit a country that was bombing Iraq”
EgP7x TIL American chocolate tastes weird to the rest of the world due to a substance called butyric acid that is often added. The taste has been compared to vomit by international tasters.
9YrPp TIL of Jolabokaflod, a Christmas Eve tradition in Iceland where friends and family get together to exchange books and then they all read them together while eating chocolate and drinking cocoa.