› added 4 years ago

375

TIL 'Red Cross' goes by Red Crescent in most of the Islamic countries as the Ottomans deemed the 'Cross' offensive to their religious sensibilities despite it being derived from the Swiss Flag . In 1983 the name of the organization was changed to "International Red Cross & Red Crescent Movement"

Read more icrc.org

via reddit.com

6EjNQ TIL that the standard workday was reduced to 8 hours because of international protests held on May 1st, the original Labor Day. "May Day" is still celebrated in most places around the globe, by everyone from Communists to Catholics, with the exception of the United States.
N7l8Q TIL: John Paul II (pope from 1978-2005) was the first non-Italian to be elected to the papacy since Adrian VI (1522-1523, and the only pope to have been born in the Netherlands.) Neither of John Paul II's succesors has been Italian.
GYw47 TIL That famous FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was a closeted homosexual and cross dresser. The mafia gathered evidence of this, and blackmailed him into never publicly acknowledging the mob's existence, let alone investigating them.
oByjK TIL about Masoud, a black slave belonging to Fatimid Caliph Al Hakim. Al Hakim would wander the streets of Cairo looking for deceptive merchants, and when he discovered one he would have Masoud publicly sodomise the man.
ADPAa TIL the "Einstein refrigerator" is an absorption refrigerator which has no moving parts, operates at constant pressure, and requires only a heat source to operate. It was jointly invented in 1926 by Albert Einstein and his former student Leó Szilárd, who patented it in the US on 11/11/1930.