› added 8 years ago

182

TIL: Chinese Empress Wu Zetian was one of the most brutal rulers in history, murdering countless rivals to consolidate her power. She would also require foreign dignitaries to perform cunnilingus on her, and even in her old age she kept a stable of sexual servants.

Read more smithsonianmag.com

via reddit.com

KOJlw TIL President Lyndon Johnson established the White House Fellows program in 1964. White House Fellows spend a year working as full-time, paid special assistants to senior White House Staff, the Vice President and there can be as many as 1,000 applicants for the eleven to nineteen fellowships
BrXxb TIL the appendix actually serves as a sort of “backup/restore point” for your guts bacteria should it get wiped out
O6GX TIL Orson Welles once met Hitler in the 1920s at a dinner, but later described the encounter saying, “He made so little impression on me that I can’t remember a second of it. He had no personality whatsoever.”
PYr5G TIL a cow from Bulgaria was almost killed because it wandered off outside the EU borders lacking the necessary paperwork.
oBOrE TIL in 2007, Hong Kong researchers warned the "presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb"