› added 5 years ago

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TIL (Canada) Phone companies must block scam calls starting today

Read more cbc.ca

via reddit.com

m1N5x TIL about Nkisi Nkondi - ritual Congolese statues made to enforce oaths and protect villages. Nails were used to alert the spirit inside of the statue to punish those breaking oaths.
jNnMa TIL Massachusetts man Richard Noll bought two scratch-offs in order to break a $100 bill to buy lunch and won $10 million from one of the tickets. Mitesh Patel, who sold him the winning ticket, will receive a $50,000 bonus.
xV7GB TIL English sweating sickness, which caused profuse sweating and sometimes led to a rapid death, remains a mystery more than five centuries later. After raging for more than 60 years, the last major outbreak of the disease in England was recorded in 1551. Then the "English sweat" simply vanished.
mxK0R TIL Matthew McConaughey's "alright, alright, alright" catch-phrase comes from his role in Dazed and Confused. He came up with it after listening to a Doors album where Jim Morrison kept saying "all right, all right, all right, all right" between songs.
5joB TIL of “Anting” a behaviour in which birds rub insects (usually ants) on their feathers and skin. The insects secrete liquids containing chemicals such as formic acid, which can act as an insecticide, miticide, fungicide, or bactericide.