› added 8 years ago

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TIL Arunachalam Murugananthan invented cheap and durable menstruation pads purely because it saddened him that his wife, and women across India, could not afford them. In the process, his wife left him, he nearly lost all of his money and was ostracized by his own community.

vgOR TIL that according to the Hawaiian creation myth, our universe comes from the wreckage of another, earlier universe and the only creatures that survived from that alien universe are octopuses
kJpog TIL that in 1977 NASA launched Voyager 1/2 into space with the Golden Record onboard. It contains music, greetings, and images which NASA cannot display online due to copyright law. NASA sent these images to space to represent humanity but cannot show these images to most humans.
D1Rde TIL about the Wittmoor bog trackway, two historic corduroy (wooden log) roads, discovered in 1898 in Hamburg, Germany. Dating of the logs used to construct the road reveal they were cut down in 330 AD during the Roman Empire.
e0K15 TIL That ACME in the Looney Tunes Cartoons was supposed to be ironic. Acme comes from a Greek word meaning "pinnacle" or "peak" implying "the peak of greatness" and that the product would be the best you could get. Any product with the name in the show was guaranteed to fail spectacularly.
NXg1P TIL there was a secret hospital during WW2 that was ran by a female doctor Franja (the hospital was also named by her) where they also treaded 2 US pilots that were shot down. When the doctor got married, they used parts of the paraschute for her wedding blouse.