› added 1 year ago

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TIL that before the invention of electric light, most Europeans had two phases of sleep, awakening late at night before sleeping again, called biphasic sleep

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QV6M TIL: the catholic church enslaved young girls in “sin laundries” ireland until 1996
R7nAw TIL Dr. Dolittle, the star of a series of lighthearted children's books about a guy who could talk to animals, was dreamt up by Hugh Lofting while in the gruesome carnage of the trenches of World War I, as a distraction, in letters to his children.
kJWAd TIL the folk legend adapted into a play ‘Doctor Faustus’ was loosely based on a real alchemist/magician Johann Georg Faust
VMddk TIL A two-page glossary of key terms and phrases was handed out to moviegoers in select screenings of Dune. Universal assumed that the extensive lore and mythology of David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel would be lost on audiences unfamiliar with it's universe
Mev1W TIL Inmates of a nazi labour camp in northern Germany's marshes were banned from singing political songs, so they wrote a "soldier" hymn to themselves being "peat bog soldiers". When the SS made them perform it at the "concentration camp circus" the anti-nazi song was so catchy, the SS sang along.