› added 7 months ago

23

TIL that Parmentier, to encourage the consumption of potatoes which people were wary of, decided to have the field where he grew them guarded by armed men during the day but not at night. Guarding the field increased the value of the crop; at night it was easy to steal tubers, and consumption spread

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

xEkg TIL “In 2000, [Blockbuster Video] turned down a chance to purchase a one-year-old company called Netflix for $50 million.”
5yxk TIL In 2008 a Japanese man noticed his food going missing, so he set up a webcam and found that a woman had been living in his closet for a year.
dDrL8 TIL there are 42,634 high schools in the United States. In 2023 the Ivy League Colleges are expected to enroll 14,308 students. If every Valedictorian applied to an Ivy League school, and only Valedictorians were accepted, less than 34% would get a spot.
WkbB8 TIL the Metric system was invented in 1799
xpkD TIL The 2005 Energy Policy Act contains a provision commonly known as the “Halliburton loophole” which exempts drilling companies involved in fracking operations to be exempt from Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and CERCLA