› added 6 months ago

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TIL that David Carradine died in a hotel room in Bangkok, the reported result of autoerotic asphyxiation - the intentional restriction of oxygen for sexual pleasure. His family and agent believed that Carradine was murdered.

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P1PjO TIL there was a briefly popular social movement in the early 1930s called the "Technocracy Movement." Technocrats proposed replacing politicians and businessmen with scientists and engineers who had the expertise to manage the economy.
MXX7 TIL Housewives had a device that would charge 10 cents to ring the doorbell to prevent salesmen from harassing them
yQVlM TIL that 12,000 bears are farmed for their bile in Asia which is used in traditional Chinese medicine and generates $2bn per year. Farming always involves surgery on the bears to insert a catheter or to cut a hole through the abdomen by which the bile leaks. Bear bile has no medicinal effect.
wLDDW TIL Princess Alexandra of Bavaria believed she had swallowed a glass piano as a child. This delusion was not unheard of and was recorded in Europe and mainly suffered by royals, nobels and scholars (between C15 and C17). It was manifest as a fear that parts of their anatomy were made of glass.
WQLX TIL that 740 Park in Manhattan is currently home to the highest concentration of billionaires in the country.