› added 6 years ago

1800

TIL in 1969, Brazilian bus drivers were arrested for training beetles to crawl inside fare boxes and carry out the coins. The beetles were also arrested.

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WkVO8 TIL there is an french delicacy in which an ortolan songbird is caught in a cage, forced to gorge on grain, drowned in cognac, and then consumed while covering your head with a napkin to hide your shame from god.
WRw4 TIL After Pope Gregory IX associated cats with devil worship, cats throughout Europe were exterminated in droves. This sudden lack of cats led to an increase in rat infestation which in turn increased the spread of disease, the most devastating being the Bubonic Plague.
wLvL6 TIL that in 1936, the city of Spokane gave their last electric streetcar a Viking funeral: After its final trip, it was paraded through the city, then filled with hay bales and set ablaze, until finally "six pretty girls in bathing suits and firemen's red hats" put out the fire
RXMj TIL a lighthouse keeper’s cat named Tibbles is said to have single-handedly driven an entire species of wren into extinction, making the bird “the only known species on Earth to be entirely wiped out by a single being”.
mxowY TIL Barbara Bach who was Russian agent XXX the main Bond girl in The Spy Who Loved Me, auditioned for Charlie's Angels prompting them to ask her manager if she could play an American. Bach was born in Queens, New York