› added 9 years ago

137

TIL Horace Wells, man who pioneered the use of laughing gas in dentistry, became so deranged after experimenting with chloroform that he poured sulfuric acid on 2 prostitutes. He committed suicide shortly after realizing what he had done.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

8aOLG TIL there's only one type of toothpaste that actually rebuilds enamel and damage to teeth, as opposed to creating the environment for teeth to repair themselves. Using a chemical called NovaMin that was initially used in the 60s to quickly repair the bones of troops in battle.
awQWL TIL about the remote island chain in the pacific called the Pitcairn Islands and how they have one settlement of about 50 people who are almost all decended from the mutineers of the HMS Bounty and the indiginous Tahitians the mutineers had with them.
OJ4X TIL Billionaire John D Rockefeller enjoyed giving away dimes to everyone he met, including children. He would give a dime for a good story, or pour dimes over a stain if someone spilled something. Sometimes he would even tease the person by holding back the dime.
LEG0 TIL that Croatia voluntarily joined Nazi Germany in WW2 and perpetuated a now largely-forgotten Holocaust of Serbs and Jews in Yugoslavia. Their methods of genocide were so brutal that even the Nazis had to tell the Croatians to stop.
X0DED TIL the song "Life Is A Highway" was inspired by a trip songwriter Tom Cochrane took to Africa on behalf of the World Vision famine relief organization. Cochrane said later "[The song] became a pep talk to myself... saying you can’t really control all of this stuff, you just do the best you can."