› added 11 years ago

234

TIL the ridges around the side of the Quarter are a leftover from when the coin was made of silver. The ridges were meant to prevent the practice of shaving off small amounts of silver from the coins.

16Q8D TIL about the Pascaline, a mechanical calculator invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642 to help his father, who was supervisor of taxes in Rouen. The Pascaline added and subtracted two numbers, and multipled and divided through series of additions or substractions
1a6Gd TIL Electronic Arts is not even in the top 5 companies in terms of game sales in 2016. The top spot goes to Tencent, a Chinese company that makes casual games for the QQ messaging client. They raked in over twice as much profit as EA last year.
D1xVg TIL President Kennedy's family repurchased the house where he was born in after his assassination. His mother restored the house to her recollection of its 1917 appearance and wanted to restore the home to the hour of his birth. She donated the home to the National Park Service in 1967
epRy5 TIL during WW2 Hungarian chemist and noble laureate, George de Hevesy, dissolved two fellow laureate’s gold Noble Prizes in aqua regia to prevent Nazis from confiscating them
ArAg TIL that a “blind pig” was a lower-class establishment that sold alcohol during Prohibition (in contrast to a higher-class “speakeasy”). The owner would charge customers to see an attraction (such as an animal) and then serve a “complimentary” alcoholic beverage, thus circumventing the law.