› added 9 months ago

30

TIL about Kitty Fisher, who was famous for simply for being famous. In one incident, she fell off her horse while riding and exposed herself. Broadsheets & prints mocked her, but she seized the attention for herself by having her portrait painted by England's most prominent painter.

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VBn5m TIL that fortune telling for monetary compensation is illegal in the state of Pennsylvania.
v1WpK TIL that in 2015, as a prank, a science journalist and others set up a study which showed that eating chocolate could help you lose weight faster. The study was published in a scientific journal and widely reported in the media.
9w7ap TIL that astronomers regularly observe mysterious lights and temporary changes in structure on the surface of the moon. "Transient lunar phenomena" have not been fully explained, and are almost never observed at two different places on Earth at the same time.
pmjO TIL that in 2009, within one month of each other, 16-year-olds in Canada and Taiwan discovered plastic-eating microorganisms that could potentially solve our plastic and styrofoam waste problems.
WkgNX TIL a 42,000 year old foal was found entombed and in great condition in permafrost. It is "the best-preserved Ice Age animal ever found in the world,” according to Grigoryev, head of the Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk.