› added 9 years ago

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TIL that sex workers in Australia can claim dance lessons, lingerie and costume makeup as tax deductions. Vibrators and fetish equipment can also be claimed, but as depreciating assets.

Read more ato.gov.au

via reddit.com

newyY TIL that Times Square's most famous building has been largely vacant for decades, and generates virtually all of its revenue from exterior billboards. The interior, once home to the New York Times, is now considered to be too cramped and dilapidated to be rentable.
YnMA TIL that it was believed if a man had no gag reflex he was gay. In some cases if a man admitted to being gay in the military, but gagged during the test, he wouldn’t be released.
0wr6M TIL Tony Iommi, founding member of the Black Sabbath, replaced his finger tips with homemade prostheses made out of plastic after losing them on his last day at a steel factory , requiring him to downtune his guitar to play it, creating their signature sound and helping to define modern metal music.
J1lVm TIL there is a "Bōzu (Shaved-Head) Bridge" in Japan, named after a legend that says anyone crossing it would find their hair mysteriously shaved off. This was believed to be the work of a tanuki, a Japanese raccoon dog known in folktales for its mischievous pranks and love of fooling people.
rR0ne TIL The light pen, a predecessor to modern touch screens, was first invented in 1955 and popular through the 60s and 80s. A light pen detects changes in brightness from the cathode-ray tube and communicates the timing of this event, time and brightness are correlated for position.