› added 3 years ago

102

TIL about Hijra, a historically-accepted third gender in South Asia

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

bdQ TIL Nirvana disliked the original video for Smells Like Teen Spirit so much, Kurt flew to L.A. and reedited it to the version we know today. Here’s the original version.
jN7GQ TIL: An Ethiopian farmer boy was sold into slavery, earned his freedom and became the defacto ruler of Central India in the 1600s
p8g5N TIL the Gendarmerie of Haiti, the collaborationist police-force raised by the USA during its occupation of Haiti in the early 1900s, sent a rifle team of indigenous gendarmes to the 1924 Olympics. The team won the nation's first-ever Olympic medal, a bronze, in the team free rifle event.
b97GZ TIL a riddle from 1688 goes. "If a man born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes, could he, if given the ability, distinguish those objects by sight alone?" In 2003 the riddle was solved when five people had their sight restored though surgery. They could not.
N7VMM TIL that machine spun cotton candy was invented by a dentist in 1904 and then in 1921 a similar machine was invented, again by a dentist