› added 4 years ago

98

TIL the ancient greeks thought the body was regulated by four humors (juices): blood, yellow bile, phlegm and "black bile". In a healthy body they were in the right proportion to each other, an imbalance was thought to be the cause of diseases. From these humors we still have words like sanguin or

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

JYrLk TIL about Aeroflot Flight 3352, a crash that happened as a result of a flight controller falling asleep and not informing a landing aircraft that the runway was occupied with maintanance personnel.
awadZ TIL Certain oak tree populations will synchronize to produce almost no acorns, only to rain them down excessively the following year, known as a "mast" year. The year preceding the mast year is thought to starve off the mammal populations feeding on the acorns.
4XevR TIL Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was challenged to a duel against James Laird. Clemens' marksmanship was so dreadful that his friend, Steve Gillis, shot off the head of a small bird before Laird arrived and told him that Clemens had shot it down. Thus, Laird retreated in fear and canceled the match.
b9pxQ TIL to gaslight someone, meaning to make one think they're going crazy, comes from the movie Gaslight (1944), where a husband tried to make his wife (Ingrid Bergman) think that very thing by dimming the gas lights in house and making her think she was imagining it.
9ww5D TIL there are "Harbinger households": neighborhoods that consistently choose failed products and therefore could predict market failures