› added 7 years ago

208

TIL that Pope Gregory IX told his followers that cats were associated with the devil. As a result, people started killing cats. With fewer cats around to hunt rats, the rat population exploded…leading to the spread of the bubonic plague.

Read more offbeat.topix.com

via ift.tt

EgJ5X TIL that Because English and British generals insisted The French unit that helped librate Paris would be all white, a white french unit had to be shipped in from Morocco, and was supplemented with volunteers from Spain and Portugal. Making it all white but not all French.
b97E TIL there’s a land between Egypt and Sudan that is not claimed by any country; it is the only such place in the world outside of Antarctica
DQd8P TIL about "the yips", the sudden and unexplained loss of ability to perform certain actions in experienced athletes across many sports. For example, All-Star pitcher Jon Lester began struggling to field hit balls in 2014 so he would run most of the way to 1st base and underhand throw the ball.
4XZk6 TIL that modern scientific research is seen by scientists and historians as "Big Science", with scientific progress since WWII increasingly relying on large-scale projects with big budgets, big staff, big machines, and big laboratories, usually funded by national governments or groups of governments
lO9B TIL that the Huns had no writing system, and thus all records of them were written by their enemies – who universally describe them as nearly monstrous in appearance, speech, and behavior.