› added 8 years ago

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TIL of illegal “Gutter Oil” in China, where raw sewage and other waste is boiled down to make cooking oil, which is then used by street vendors and restaurants to cook with.

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wa56 TIL the drink called “punch” has no relation to punching and instead comes from the Sanskrit for “five”, since it was made with five ingredients in India
oRB1W TIL Global shark populations were wiped out by up to 90 per cent around 19 million years ago, even though there were no signs of sudden climatic or environmental changes
6EBlZ TIL only 1 woman ever won the medal of honour & they tried to take it away from her. She was an early feminist & nurse who refused to wear women’s clothing & was disliked by the leading suffragists who said she was giving the “wrong image” for her clothing style.
yKYw TIL the writer Roald Dahl’s mission, as a spy for the British government, was to seduce powerful US women in order to gather useful intelligence. For this reason he had to sleep with countless high society women.
lo9LK TIL that on December 23rd 1953 Lavrentiy Beria (Head of the U.S.S.R.'s N.K.V.D.) begged on his knees for mercy before being executed. His fate was similar to that of his predecessor, Nikolai Yezhov, whom Beria is rumored to have strangled.