› added 11 years ago

110

TIL a 16th century serial killer murdered 964 individuals. This including 6 of his newborn babies, birthed from a sex slave he held captive 7 years, before she convinced him to let her go to town where she betrayed him by dropping peas for the town’s men to follow and capture him.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

E1LVd TIL that electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco on September 7, 1927. The system was designed by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, a 21-year-old inventor who had lived in a house without electricity until he was 14.
VMe6D TIL that the thinking--i.e. non-physical activity--involved in mentally rigorous activities such as chess can require so much of the body's energy that individuals can burn hundreds of calories per hour engaging in them.
Mb6W TIL There’s a Russian superstition that if there’s a fly in the room, you shouldn’t say anything that’s secret because flys are all spys for Baba Yaga (the witch that lives in the woods). Its an old pagan superstition from before the communist revolution.
Vbr4 TIL that in 1979 swedes would call in sick for work, claiming ‘they felt gay’ as a protest on the fact that being gay was still considered an illness.
lQN7 TIL An Australian scientist discovered that adding cigarette butts to brick clay halves the energy needed to make the brick.