› added 4 years ago

77

TIL of Hypatia. She was a world-renowned female mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher of the 4th-century who was literally torn apart by oyster shells and set on fire by a mob of Christain zealots.

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a4oL TIL the story of Aladdin has no Arab source, was written by a Frenchman and takes places in a Chinese town and Aladdin is explicitly Chinese.
N7xMe TIL to combat soldier fatigue and promote aggression the Nazis distributed Crystal Meth to soldiers
D1ZRg TIL: A group of participants received a mug and were told they owned it; a second group was only shown the mug. When asked how much they would be willing to sell the mugs for, their asking price was more than twice of the second group. The “endowment effect“; we overvalue what we feel we own.
YVDv TIL there was a fad in the 50s called telephone booth stuffing where young people would try to stuff themselves in phone booths.
Mep1A TIL of the Lollards, pre Lutheran Christian Reformists who opposed many practices of the Catholic Church (such as praying to saints and confession) and translated the bible into English.