› added 8 years ago

442

TIL Yao Ming was bred and raised by the Chinese government to be a basketball star

Read more smh.com.au

via ift.tt

KO95a TIL- In France, you can sign up for a service where the postman pop in and check on your elderly parents to make sure they're all right.
1aw47 TIL in the late 1960s, some researchers reported catnip gave people a marijuana-like high, but it turned out they had simply mixed up the two plants.
ZpDR4 TIL that the original recipe of Coca-Cola contained cocaine
jN7dE TIL George Washington tried to introduce a law that would force local governments to produce books detailing 'ghosts' in the area. He believed that by forging the existence of ghosts, it would make the United States seem as if it were a country with history. This is a practice that continues today.
Rd69 TIL the Soviet government advised those working on the Chernobyl disaster to drink half a glass of vodka for every two hours in Chernobyl. The radiation was supposed to accumulate in the thyroid glands and the vodka was thought to help clean out the radiation.