› added 4 years ago

107

TIL that there was a Confederate Army brigadier general with the given name "States Rights"

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via reddit.com

Ld6P TIL the first telephone operators were boys. However, they quickly earned a reputation for being rude and abusive to callers. Young women were hired soon after as they didn’t swear as much (and were faster).
M7eG7 TIL it took an Iowa man named Otto Frederick Rohwedder some 16 years to perfect and sell the first bread-slicing machine. A prototype made in 1912 was destroyed in a fire, and he didn't sell his first slicing machine until 1928. Within 5 years, 80% of bread sold in the U.S. was pre-sliced.
gMA1D TIL in 2013, there was a train crash in Australia caused by millipedes. There were so many of them on the tracks that a train pulling into a station ended up losing friction from squishing so many of them and crashed into another train.
pYoY4 TIL America has the second highest disposable household income in the world
E14A0 TIL that poisonous food substances are the reason we find bitter taste unpleasant. Our taste buds evolved associating bitter taste to poison because most of the poisonous wild fruits are bitter & nutritious ones, sweet. The feature which protected us for centuries is now causing major health-risks.