› added 8 years ago

202

TIL When King Charles II of Navarra was sick, his doctor ordered him to be wrapped in linen and covered in brandy. Unfortunately, instead of cutting the last thread of linen with scissors, the nurse thought it’d be a great idea to burn it off, burning the King alive.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

6Ew7X TIL that the lyric "Annie, are you OK?" from the Michael Jackson song "Smooth Criminal" actually stems from American CPR training, in which students practise on their unresponsive plastic patient, CPR Annie who’s face was molded after a unknown girl who drowned in Paris.
7rdx TIL the 1956 Republican party platform read “We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs…We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.”
K4g6 TIL when Seal Team Six was founded, there were only two other Seal teams. Richard Marcinko purportedly named the unit SEAL Team Six in order to confuse other nations, specifically the Soviet Union, into believing that the United States had at least three other SEAL teams that they were unaware of.
jNMWM TIL The reason we find some smells bad is because our brains have evolved to react with disgust to the smells of thing which are major disease vectors - things such as vomit or rotting carcasses. The greater the risk of disease, the more offensive you would find the smell.
ayPZ TIL there was a Women’s Strike of 1975 in Iceland. 90% of women stopped working, cooking, and caring for children, and the entire country ground to a halt.