› added 6 years ago

63

TIL that 12,000 bears are farmed for their bile in Asia which is used in traditional Chinese medicine and generates $2bn per year. Farming always involves surgery on the bears to insert a catheter or to cut a hole through the abdomen by which the bile leaks. Bear bile has no medicinal effect.

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v4Nx TIL that actor Colin Firth is credited as a co-author of paper on the link between brain structure and political alignment because he suggested that the connection could be studied
9wkOm TIL that Elephant Seals were thought to be extinct by 1884. In 1892 an expedition from the Smithsonian found what could have been the last 8 individuals on Guadalupe Island of which the expedition killed 7 for their collection.
gLn4 TIL Tupac shot two cops, and had all the charges dropped on account of the cops drunkenly pointing a stolen gun at pedestrians
gMXBL TIL that during WWI in Germany, horses were considered army reservists; owners had to register them regularly, and the army kept detailed records on the locations of all horses. In the first weeks of the war, the German army mobilized 715,000 horses.
4X05o TIL that there is a monument to enemas in the Russian spa town of Zheleznovodsk, featuring a bronze bulb held aloft by three cherubs