› added 8 years ago

731

TIL of the Forer Effect, the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them but are, in fact, vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.

Read more science.howstuffworks.com

via reddit.com

gr66X TIL that the children’s song “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” is a sanitized version of “Do Your Balls Hang Low?”, which was popular with British soldiers in WWI. General Douglas Haig once heard a column of soldiers singing it and went to berate their commander, only to find the commander singing along.
Ok4e TIL that the firm formerly known as “Blackwater” and now as “Academi” [sic] deployed 400 Mercs to suppress anti-government protestors in Ukraine during 2014.
MDDW TIL that it is called a “shift” key because on typerwritters uppercase letters were typed by holding down a key that would literally shift the carriage so that a different part of the type bar—the part on which an uppercase letter was printed—would hit the ribbon.
p8Ma4 TIL bacon ice cream started as a joke in a 1973 Two Ronnie's sketch and was later made for real in 1982 as an April Fools joke. By 2005 however, chef Heston Blumenthal would be serving bacon ice cream at his 3 Michelin star restaurant, the Fat Duck - the #1 restaurant in the world at the time.
awyPJ TIL DMX avoided a maximum jail term for tax fraud when his lawyer played his song "Slippin'" for the judge in order to show X's struggles and how bad his upbringing was.