› added 10 years ago

312

TIL North Korea enlists around 2000 women as part of a ‘Pleasure Squad’. These are attractive women who provide entertainment and sexual services for top officials. One defector says Kim Jong-il was “sentimental when drunk, and even shed tears”

Read more thenational.ae

via reddit.com

awkDJ TIL that in 2004, Forbes named J.K. Rowling the first person to become a billionaire (in US dollars) from writing books. By 2012, she had donated so much money to charity that they had to remove her from the rich list because she was no longer a billionaire.
Lk7RQ TIL that there is an Australian shrub known as the "Suicide Plant" or the Gympie Gympie plant, that's sting can last years and is so agonising that people have been known to commit suicide after touching the plant.
JYDNk TIL: The block Michelangelo carved David out of posed several problems. Called “the Giant,” it had been quarried 40 years earlier and had started to weather from the elements. Worse, other sculptors had tried roughing out a basic shape but given up midway. The final sculpture thus befits its name.
PYmng TIL that in 2011 a giant sculpture of a woman bathing was built in the Alster Lake, Hamburg Germany. It remained in the Lake for 10 days and was made up of a head and 2 knees protruding from the water.
OG0K7 TIL of Cockaigne, an imaginary land of plenty in medieval myth, where physical comforts and pleasures are always immediately at hand. In Cockaigne, abbots are beaten by their monks, nuns are flipped over to show their bottoms, and the skies rain cheese.