› added 11 months ago

26

TIL The Great Fear of 1789, one of the events that led up to the French Revolution, started probably because peasants consumed rye contaminated with a hallucinogenic fungus called ergot and were paranoid that the aristocrats wanted to starve them.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

gMmOW TIL that the quality of a woman’s voice fluctuates through the course of her menstrual cycle with the “best voice” (higher pitch) during the ovulatory phase & “worst” during the premenstrual phase which is referred to as “premenstrual voice syndrome.”
v17gx TIL Margaret Clitherow (died 1586) was executed for the crime of harboring Catholic priests, at a time when it was a capital offence by the Jesuits, etc. Act 1584. Although still pregnant with her fourth child, she was crushed to death by her own door.
4Wo6 TIL The Grand Council of the Iroquois Confederacy declared war on Germany in 1917 during World War I and again in 1942 in World War II.
XWPX TIL an amateur radio enthusiast in the UK heard Titanic’s SOS call using his homemade radio equipment. Titanic’s radio company president was so impressed by his homemade radio that he offered the man a job, where he worked for the next 35 years.
X0RRX TIL After the revolt of unskilled industry workers in Florence in 1378, Michelle Di Lando, the son of a washerwoman, was chosen as president on the spot after storming the government seat barefooted. He soon made an alliance with the moderates, violently crushing the radical branch of the movement