› added 4 years ago

170

TIL There is a hotel in Sweden made entirely out of ice. It is rebuilt every year.

Read more secret-travel.guide

via reddit.com

WkeNL TIL there are 7 days in a week thanks to the Babylonians, who lived in modern-day Iraq. As keen observers of the heavens, the Babylonians adopted 7 days because they observed 7 celestial bodies — the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
jNmLN TIL that approximately 2 million (1%) of Americans are pathological gamblers and approximately 1 in 5 of those pathological gamblers attempts suicide.
grVpA TIL trolley refers to trams and not just shopping carts. I had believed for the longest time that the trolley problem referred to shopping carts running over people...
4kayX TIL of the Powell Memorandum. A confidential memorandum entitled "The Attack on the American Free Enterprise System". It kickstarted a concerted effort to shift US opinion to the right and started a massive PR campaign to persuade Americans that the 'left' was bad for the average American.
rR8e0 TIL the spiked ball and chain was never an actually used in warfare; it is entirely a fantasy weapon invented by later peoples but attributed to the middle ages