› added 12 years ago

103

TIL Jon Hamm taught drama at his old high school. One of his students was Ellie Kemper, Erin from The Office.

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0wWYR TIL Leaf cutter ants learned to farm 50 million years ago, they bring back leaves to feed and grow a fungus that is their food source. They also poop and excrete chemicals around the fungus that protect it against pests.
69XPw TIL that after John III Sobieski of Poland-Lithuania defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Kangxi Emperor of Qing China wrote an eulogy praising the Polish king. John III Sobieski later sent a portrait of himself to Kangxi.
l7oLN TIL about the "Inventio Fortunata," a lost book that described the North Pole as a magnetic island surrounded by a giant whirlpool and four continents, believed to be written in the 14th century. Its influence on maps of the Arctic region persisted into the 16th and 17th centuries.
p8d7G TIL Charles Vance Millar, a rich Canadian financier, made his will one giant practical joke. In it, he left three men who hated one another a join lifetime tenancy in a villa, some protestant ministers $700,000 in Catholic beer stock, and anti-horse racing advocates $25,000 in a Jockey club.
mxBJv TIL that fishballs were invented when China's first emperor demanded fish with every meal. He threatened to execute the chef if he found bones in his food. The chef mashed the fish to remove bones quicker, ran out of time, panicked, so he squeezed the fish paste into balls and threw it in some soup.