› added 5 years ago

149

TIL The name Ouija Board was trademarked by William A Fuld in 1950. In 1966, Fuld's company was acquired by Parker Brothers, who then merged with Hasbro, meaning Hasbro has all the rights to the Ouija Board.

gKp7 TIL Geneticists have figured out the time that evolving humans lost their primate body hair by using mitochondrial DNA to calculate the date that head lice evolution diverged from that of public lice.
yVXK8 TIL medieval polymath St Hildegard of Bingen constructed her own language from scratch, with a whole new alphabet and vocabulary, mainly based on Latin and middle german. It's one of the earliest constructed languages ever, and the purpose of it, remains largely unknown
ne0gr TIL about the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain which was founded in 1977 for people proud of their incompetence. The club was forced to closed when the founder sold a book which became a bestseller and the club receiving thousands of applications "Even as failures, we failed"
ADNd7 TIL a clam named ‘Ming’ was accidentally killed by scientist in 2006 when they found it on the coast of Iceland. They later found out ‘Ming’ was 507 years old. It was named after the Ming Dynasty, who ruled China at the time of it’s birth (1499) The clam is known as the oldest creature to ever live.
xVMZw TIL from 1897-1907 the US Department of Labor commissioned several reports on the condition of Blacks in America, culminating in a damning report by W.E.B. Du Bois on the exploitation of Blacks in Alabama. Rather than publish the report, the DOL destroyed all copies and halted the studies.