› added 11 years ago

387

TIL: MRSA (the near incurable flesh eating staph infection) has gone airborne.

Read more ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

via reddit.com

n9VY TIL that many words used to be spelled phonetically (e.g. debt was ‘det’) until some scholars purposely added silent letters to make them look more like Greek or Latin words, sometimes erroneously.
QJY46 TIL there are only about 25 blimps left in the world.
lR7B TIL Confederate cavalry general Nathan Bedford Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He quit the group less than two years later. In 1875 he was invited to give a speech before an organization of black Southerners advocating racial reconciliation and equality. (Speech in Comments)
lAMA TIL that in Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Mexico, attempting to escape from prison in itself is not a crime because the desire to escape is human nature. However, in Mexico it’s still legal for officers to shoot prisoners trying to escape.
dyjj TIL that in the seventeenth century, bands of wanderers called Comprachicos bought children, deformed and mutilated them, and sold them as dwarves, freaks, and court jesters, mainly to royal courts for their amusement.