› added 2 years ago

70

TIL before 1950 almost 1 in 3 homes in the United States had bedbug infestations.

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ADrW4 TIL that coaches in college sports are significantly more abusive, mean, and aggressive than people in the military
a8MAA TIL about English as She Is Spoke. Intended as a Portuguese-English translation guide, the author actually had no grasp of English. For help he used a Portuguese-French guide and then a French-English one. The resulting book is a hilarious trainwreck
m1LXM TIL about Theseus, a robotic mouse created by Claude Shannon in the 1950s, which could learn to navigate mazes using telephone relay switches, marking one of the first instances of machine learning. Theseus helped researchers better understand routing in telephone networks of that era.
d8KKd TIL of the Cavan Orphanage Fire in which 35 children died because the nuns wouldn't let firemen in the building due to the children's "state of undress"
LQLvQ TIL Margaret Hamilton, known for playing Almira Gulch and the Wicked Witch in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz, was only 36 years old at the time of filming; a full 18 years younger than Billie Burke, who played Glinda.