› added 12 years ago

101

TIL that HSBC was actually founded by and for drug trafficers bringing opium into China

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via reddit.com

ZpJD4 TIL: in 1919, famous eugenicist Charles Davenport published a study claiming that being a sea captain (thalassophilia - "love of the sea") was a recessive sex-linked genetic trait because it appeared only in males and could skip generations. He dismissed all criticism as “uninformed.”
wLEdo TIL that blue eyes don’t have blue pigment and are instead blue for the same reason that water and the sky are blue: they scatter light so that only blue light reflects out
XEQMR TIL that one teaspoon of honey is a lifetime work of 12 bees
Rav7 TIL That having older brothers increases a male’s chance of being homosexual
BPmb TIL that during the Civil War, the Union ignited 8,000 lbs of gunpowder, destroying a mine under the Confederate encampment, then proceeded to charge into the crater from the explosion, got stuck in said crater, and were brutally massacred due to Confederate high ground.