› added 7 years ago

75

TIL Cough drops used to be made with morphine and heroin.

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vP5GB TIL: The original penguins or Great Auk was a species driven to extinction by man. Scientists in the 1600s noticed and tried to prevent it through numerous laws, it failed. In 1840 the last auk in Britain was beaten to death with sticks as the men thought it was a witch causing storms.
69Lr8 TIL Alabama Song, made famous by the Doors, was originally written as a poem by Bertolt Brecht in 1925.
XE7eP TIL that only around 10% of blind Americans know how to read Braille, compared to 1950, where 50% knew how to read Braille. This is due to a shortage of teachers to teach it and more reliance on technology as well as Braille being seen as outdated.
NXkJ1 TIL that in 2024, roughly 170,790 people died each day across the globe
nWevW TIL in the 1960s the US government dug a mile-deep hole in the ground and dropped a 40-kiloton atomic bomb in it, to release natural gas. It worked, but the gas was too radioactive to use, and the project was abandoned.