› added 6 months ago

22

TIL from 1810 to 1840 tobacco merchant & philanthropist Joseph Williamson funded excavations of an extensive network of tunnels & chasms, the purpose of which is still not fully clear. The tunnels were later used as waste pits until they were "rediscovered" in 1995.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

wo76 TIL many American vodkas really are the same. They’re produced by a handful of commodity giants and sold to brands for dilution, filtering, and packaging. One distillery fills 3 separate brand partner bottles with the same potato vodka.
p8Bp4 TIL that when Shaka Zulu's mother died, he ordered that any woman who became pregnant in the year of mourning was to be executed, anyone not sufficiently sad was to be executed, and calves would have their mothers slaughtered so that they would know his pain.
W7QY8 TIL that the blindfold was added to Lady Justice satirically, to say that Justice was blind to all the injustice before her. The blindfold was later repurposed to what we know today as representing that justice should be carried out impartially.
rRJXy TIL about the General Archive of the Indies, a building in Seville, Spain that contains millions of documents regarding the colonization and administration of the Americas, with original scriptures from people like Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, and various Conquistadors
Wkngd TIL that only two foreign flags were flown over the White House. Flag of Serbia was the first one to be raised in 1918 for their WW1 achievments and war solidarity, with latter being French flag in 1920 to commemorate the French Bastille Day