› added 6 years ago

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TIL that Americans used to say "alumin-ium" like the British, but the chemist who named the element couldn't make up his mind on how to spell it. This led to Webster's Dictionary printing it as "alumin-um", eventually causing American chemists to adopt the 'incorrect' spelling.

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d8MvQ TIL that Ada Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron, is regarded as the first computer programmer. She wrote an algorithm for Charles Babagge's theroetical Analytical Engine in 1842, over 100 years before the development of the first computer.
Yponv TIL out of the 14 dot-com companies that advertised during the Super Bowl in 2000, only 4 are still active today.
e0A8L TIL that lack of sleep can contribute to the end of your marriage because according to this study results if both partners got less than seven hours of sleep the previous two nights, the couple was more likely to "argue or become hostile."
lm1A TIL In 1957 BBC aired a 3 minute segment about a Swiss family harvesting their “spaghetti tree” as an April Fool’s Day Prank, when hundreds of people called into the BBC to ask them about it they told them to, “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best”.
VBGk4 TIL those gum containers are called "bottles"