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TIL The Assyrians had basic lens technology. One of their creations, the Nimrud lens, dates to 710 BCE, though its purpose is debated. Lenses could have been used to start fires, as decoration, or astronomy tools (with references to the snakes of saturn being the rings or mythology)

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xVDe1 TIL That ancient Greeks hung a branch of bay over the door of a sick person to fend off evil and death. This led to the garlanding of newly qualified doctors with a bay wreath, known as the Bacca laureus in Latin, which gave us the word "baccalaureate" (University Degree).
R5D07 TIL Pythagoras was supposedly the first person to call the heavens, the cosmos, for in his eyes, this celestial ocean embodied perfection, and was intricately adorned with infinite beauty and animated life. And he was also the first to call himself a philosopher. In fact, he coined the term.
oBY7o TIL: Nazi Prisoners built a raft and escaped their POW camp. Only to find that the Salt River had run dry.
b9o7E TIL that if you fall asleep on a Tarantino set they will take a picture of you with a 3ft. dildo named "Big Jerry" next to your face and put it on the wall of shame. If you take it it down, it gets enlarged and put up again. If you take it down again, it gets printed on t-shirts for the whole crew.
x6Xb7 TIL during the rise of Japan as a major economic power, seen as an economic threat to the US, anti-Japanese sentiment was so high that a Chinese American was beaten to death before his wedding on the assumption that he was Japanese. In 1987, US congressmen smashed Toshiba products on Capitol Hill