› added 6 years ago

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TIL Ocho de Plata, the Spanish Dollar, was the first legal tender in the United States until the Coinage Act of 1857. In fact, equity shares were still quoted in eighths of a dollar until 2001; this was a legacy from the coin’s divisibility by 8, since each Spanish Dollar was worth 8 reales.

VBEZB TIL that "diesel therapy" is a form of punishment used by the US prison system. Inmates are taken on excessively long journeys of days or weeks between prisons, shackled without water or AC in hot buses with poor sanitation.
MebkA TIL John Franzese was a mob boss who was taped by an informant discussing the ideal method of disposing of a body. He recommended taking 30 minutes to an hour to dismember the body in a kiddie pool, dry the parts in a microwave and finally mulch them in a commercial grade garbage disposal.
0Ebp TIL that in 16th century London, a law forbade wife-beating after 9:00pm, but only because the noise disturbed people’s sleep.
Yplev TIL that a NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson was the only American not on Earth when the 9/11 attacks occurred. His morning call started with “Well, Frank, we’re not having a very good day down here on earth.”
nejZb TIL Australian doctor Barry Marshall was mocked by physicians of his time when he hypothesized that the bacterial species H. pylori can cause stomach ulcers. To prove his hypothesis, he drank cultured H. pylori and developed stomach ulcers as a result. He later received the Nobel Prize in 2005.