› added 5 months ago

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TIL that the word “robot” comes from a 1920 Czech play called R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), and originally meant “forced labor” or “serfdom.”

Read more wordorigins.org

via reddit.com

VBjk TIL A man who refuses to wear clothes has been in Scottish prison for 6 years in total.
yQLZV TIL that breastfeeding allows a baby to give germs to mothers so that her immune system can respond and can synthesize antibodies for her baby.
wLjZJ TIL that The Animals recorded The House of the Rising Sun in one take for £34 after loading their equipment on a stolen British railway wagon and pushing it through the West End of London to get to the studio on their day off
X06QP TIL pumpkin pie and Thanksgiving were a matter of mid-19th century identity politics. When Abraham Lincoln declared a day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November in 1863, many Southern families refused Thanksgiving and especially pumpkin pie as cultural artifacts of the Yankees.
P1Agn TIL that the American Beautyberry fruit is food for more than 40 species of songbirds and eaten by armadillo, foxes, opossum, raccoon, squirrels and white tailed deer (eat fruit and leaves) in addition to being used as medicine by Native American tribes and as mosquito repellent by early farmers.