› added 1 year ago

51

TIL The safety pin was invented in 1849 to settle a $15 debt.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

WOdA TIL that before the Civil War, some psychiatrists diagnosed slaves with what they called drapetomania: “a mental illness in which the slave possessed an irrational desire for freedom and a tendency to try to escape.”
4XABw TIL that in 2015, mist sprinklers, which cool the air, were placed near the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Many visitors to the museum were upset, saying the shower-like misters evoked memories of Nazi-era gas chambers. Nazi gas chambers were often disguised as showers.
E1lJ7 TIL Natalie Imbruglia’s 1997 hit “Torn” is a cover of a 1993 Danish song called “Burned”.
5Y7KR TIL of Morganna the Kissing Bandit, a very well-endowed stripper who made her name by ambushing and kissing (on the cheek) famous athletes on the field. When charged with trespassing at an Astros game, her lawyer got her off by arguing that her chest made her lose balance and fall over the fence.
5VO5p TIL the historian meridian marker In Greenwich is off by about 100 meters because they looked "straight up" at stars, but to find "straight up" you use a weight to find "straight down", and the uneven mass of the Earth means that it doesn't point to the exact center of the Earth