› added 5 years ago

260

TIL during the 2008 Great Recession, overall mortality rates actually went down.

Read more pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

via reddit.com

QNbAM TIL that in 1900, a physician named Jesse William Lazear wanted to prove that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes. He allowed an infected mosquito to bite him, and he became infected with yellow fever, proving his hypothesis correct. He died 17 days later.
wLexo TIL that in 36 BCE, Roman statesman Marcus Varro wrote about germs, describing "minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which...enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious diseases." The germ theory of disease would not be accepted widely for another 1,900 years.
WQQd TIL several species of animals have never been proven by scientists to actually die of old age. It is believed that these animals may be immortal or may age so slowly that humans cannot detect the process. The phenomenon is called “negligible senescence”
Y7knr TIL When William The Conqueror of England died, the body exploded when they tried to stuff him into the too-small stone coffin.
6EGYW TIL the verb “eavesdrop” is a back-formation from the noun “eavesdropper”, which was formed from the unrelated noun eavesdrop (“the dripping of water from the eaves of a house”). An eavesdropper was someone who stands at the eavesdrop (i.e., next to the house) so as to hear what is said within.