› added 5 years ago

92

TIL A butler serves a household while a valet serves an individual.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

xV4N7 TIL The Ming Dynasty did not have the Ancient Chinese Secret Commercial, much less the Calgon. They use artificial alkali to clean their clothes. This gives us an idea of what detergent the ancient Chinese used. A very good Ming Dynasty blog post.
jn7X TIL As a child Joe Walsh struggled to learn the guitar solo to the Beatles “And Your Bird Can Sing”. Upon meeting a Beatle years later he found out it was an overdubbed two-part solo and that he might be the only person in the world that could play both parts at once.
4QNw TIL that the saxophone was invented only in 1846 by Adolphe Sax. As a child, he survived a three-story fall, a gunpowder explosion, drinking a bowl of sulfuric water, a near-poisoning due to furniture varnish, and falling into a speeding river. His neighbors called him “little Sax, the ghost.”
nWpgo TIL about how the Vikings used the sod roof as an insulator method, it helped keeping their houses warm at winter and cold in the summer, it also helped prevent fires and floods.
Z45a TIL in 1965, seeds that were dated to 2,000 years old were discovered in an ancient jar in Israel. The seeds were kept in storage for 40 years and after they were planted, a tree that had been extinct for over 1800 years sprouted.