› added 5 years ago

79

TIL that Dr. Carlo Urbani recognized the emergence of a outbreak of pneumonia as a new epidemic and immediately notified the WHO, personally flying to Hanoi to investigate. He would die this day in 2003 of SARS, having triggered the most effective response to an epidemic in history.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

5X1n TIL one of Charles Darwin’s daughters was so offended by a particularly phallic mushroom that she would pick and then burn them to protect ‘the morals of the maids’
rRde4 TIL the nazi Sieg Heil was ridiculed by some people. Since "heil" is also the imperative of the German verb "heilen" ("to heal"), a common joke in Nazi Germany was to reply with "Is he sick?", "Am I a doctor?", or "You heal him!"
9Y47B TIL: Pablo Picasso's real name is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
6PD8 TIL there was a TV show piloted in Germany where twelve contestants donated their sperm to a lab where doctors observed their seed race towards an egg. The winner of The Sperm Race got a Porsche.
BVAk TIL the oldest recorded cat was 38 years old. The same owner had a cat that lived 34 years. It is believed to be the strange diet of the cats that played a large role in their lifespan.