› added 7 months ago

85

TIL that in 1948 comedy writers at the BBC were forbidden to make jokes about lavatories and effeminacy in men or make suggestive references to honeymoon couples, chambermaids, fig leaves, prostitution, ladies' underwear, animal habits (e.g. rabbits), lodgers, and commercial travellers.

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via reddit.com

WkG9 TIL that, in 2008 “more than 36,000 people died of drug overdoses in the U.S., and more than 20,000 of these overdose deaths were from prescription drugs” according to the CDC.
eZ84 TIL that it was once customary for Indian women to be burned alive on their husband’s funeral pyre. A British general outlawed it, saying: This … is your custom… But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them"
b66rj TIL that Johnny Appleseed planted apples for manufacturing booze and selling land to pioneers, not to help spread fruit across the land.
R595Q TIL that Mithradates VI invaded the Kingdom of Cappadocia three times, deposing the puppet ruler each time, and afterwards, the Romans put the puppet ruler back on each time.
oRnkY TIL that the first Tay Bridge collapsed in a winter gale in December 1879, just nineteen months after opening, plunging a passenger train into the Firth of Tay and killing all 75 people on board