› added 10 months ago

34

TIL: In order to perform a Ushi no toki Mairi curse, the practitioner wears white and tall clogs, dons an iron crown with 3 candles, suspends a mirror from their chest, then nails an effigy of her target to a tree between 1-3am. In Japanese law it is a textbook example of "impossibility defense".

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

9YpY6 TIL the verb 'to snipe' originated in the 1770s among soldiers in British India where hunter skilled enough to kill a particularly elusive bird, the snipe, were called 'snipers'. This is also the origin of the term 'snipe hunt' to describe an impossible task.
l8rV TIL of the greatest flood the world has ever known - the Missoula Floods. It created the Scablands in WA in as little as 48 hours where at one point was the largest and most powerful waterfall in the history of the Earth.
9YZNm TIL that after struggling to sell his product in drug stores, the inventor of Vaseline would travel around the US intentionally burning himself with acid or an open flame in front of audiences. He would then spread the product all over the wounds and show off old lesions he claimed to be healed
Eg8rW TIL that the record for the longest gap between release and reaching number one on the Billboard charts was set by the Mariah Carey song "All I Want for Christmas Is You", which first reached number one in the United States 25 years after its release.
WkVDB TIL A pigeon received the Croix de Guerre medal for distinguished bravery in WW1. After being shot down and suffering multiple wounds she carried on, and saved the lives of 194 men.