› added 5 years ago

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Today I learned about a Dutch bicycle company that put pictures of TVs on their bike boxes to prevent damage while shipping. Doing so saw an 80% decrease in damage.

Read more bicycling.com

via reddit.com

vK57 TIL that peppers are hot to repel mammals, which damage seeds, but allow birds to spread the seeds because birds are immune to spicy capsaicin
e0Jnb TIL that comedian Sid Caesar picked a writers' room of young unknown comics for his hit TV shows in the 50s- including Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon and Woody Allen
rOad TIL people believed that sufferers of Williams Syndrome, who have charming & extraordinarily kind personalities, had extraordinary, even magical powers. The word ‘elfin’ was used to describe their facial features. This is believed to be the origin of elves, fairies & 'wee folk’ in English folklore.
jN4JX TIL that the opening theme music of '2001: A Space Odyssey', the 1968 Kubrick film, is 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' (1896) by German composer Richard Strauss. I knew there was a lot of classical music in the film, but thought (for 50 years!) the main theme music was modern. Duh.
p8Aoe TIL that in 1999 Linux users protested infront of a Microsoft building to get their version of Windows 98 refunded which was bound to purchasing a PC. This shed some light on the rather scummy refund procedure Microsoft had but in the end no one got their money back.