› added 3 years ago

104

TIL about the Turnspit dog, which was bred specifically to run on a wheel that turns meat over a fire. They are now extinct

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Y7gl7 TIL Philip Ahn was a Korean American actor who played villainous Japanese characters "to the hilt" during the Second World War. Ahn had fun with the parts, when asked to speak Japanese would actually speak Korean and make remarks described as “highly uncomplimentary to the Japanese.”
EgdOw TIL fish have thoughts and feelings, they like to have fun, and they achieve stress relief through soothing physical contact like monkeys and humans do (think mutual grooming or massage therapy). They grieve if they lose their mate, and fish who can't get with their desired lover become pessimistic.
LQAm TIL in the UK, children over the age of 5 can legally drink alcohol, so long as they’re in either their house or a friend’s.
x6y90 TIL The Mercury astronaut candidate examinations involves sensory deprivation test of you being placed in a circular 8 foot deep tank of body temperature water without hallucinating. The normal reaction is for the subconscious mind to take over and one lapses into uncontrollable hallucinations
gr66X TIL that the children’s song “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” is a sanitized version of “Do Your Balls Hang Low?”, which was popular with British soldiers in WWI. General Douglas Haig once heard a column of soldiers singing it and went to berate their commander, only to find the commander singing along.