› added 9 years ago

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TIL when Yao Ming played his first game in Miami, the Heat promoted the game by passing out 8,000 fortune cookies. Yao wasn’t offended because he had never seen a fortune cookie, and assumed it was an American invention

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b9x5p TIL in Victorian times, the cheapest form of accommodation available was a “penny hang”. You could literally pay a penny to sleep over a ROPE. This was commonly used by drunk sailors who had spent all of their money and is the origin of the term “hangover“.
bPJp TIL 17th century Dutch blacksmith Jan de Doot allegedly removed an egg-sized bladder stone from himself using a procedure called lithotomy in which one makes an incision between the scrotum and the anus and removes the offending stone. He then set it in gold.
wX4J TIL New Zealand bans all advertising on TV on Christmas, Easter, Good Friday and ANZAC Day
jNRWE TIL that brass doorknobs (or any other brass objects) sterilise themselves after about 8h since bacteria have a hard time surviving on brass. This is called the Oligodynamic Effect.
ak5J TIL: US soldiers raped, burned and killed a 14yo Iraqi girl and killed 3 members of her family including 6yo sister