› added 8 years ago

124

TIL The Guinness Book of Records was originally published by Guinness Breweries as a reference for settling bar arguments.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

90KB TIL there are “heater bees” who keep their body temperatures 10 degrees hotter than other bees in the colony to keep the hive warm. They also can vary the temperature around developing pupae to determine what kind of honey bee they will become: either forager bees or “house keeper” bees.
X49R TIL the Bill Gates Foundation bought 500,000 shares of Monsanto. They still own the shares and won’t answer questions when the topic is raised.
5V9W9 TIL of the Name-Letter Effect, where people tend to like the letters in their name over other letters. It holds in other languages, and is tied to self-esteem. People tend to favor brands that share their initials, and donate to disaster relief for hurricanes with their same first letter.
yVnl TIL that in Islamic Law, A literate Prisoner of War can secure his/her freedom by teaching ten Muslims to read and write.
W7NbX TIL that Iceland and the UK directly fought against each other in the "Cod Wars" intermittently from the 1950s to the 1970s. This was despite both states being members of NATO.