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TIL: Ancient Europeans Worshipped Wood and Stonehenges

Read more woodcentral.com.au

via reddit.com

N7WXe TIL that the reason old pubs have "Ye Old" instead of "The Old" is because when the printing press was invented in Germany, they didn't have any letters for the old letter Thorn, which made a "th" sound. Thorn ultimately was replaced with Y because they looked similar until the Th start was popular.
Qay6 TIL that the “natural flavoring” in some vanilla, strawberry, and raspberry flavored foods is a substance derived from the scent sacs of a beavers butthole.
v1eO8 TIL Empress Irene of the Byzantine Empire, among other things, became empress by winning a beauty contest, after her husband died became the first empress to rule in her own right in Byzantine History, and blinded her own son in order to retain power.
Rv9 TIL a group of British librarians ranked “To Kill a Mockingbird” ahead of the Bible as the book everyone should read before they die
7rJKL TIL that in response to the cholera outbreak of 1854, Chicago engineers decided to install a sewage system by raising the grade of the city by up to 14 feet. That is, they literally put buildings on stilts and buried the new sewer pipes under the buildings.