› added 13 years ago

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TIL Captured British soldiers were once executed by having their mouth pried open, and peed into by village women until they drowned.

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j88p TIL that ‘Tommy Boy’ is actually an update of Shakespeare’s 'Hamlet’: Tommy is the Prince, his father dies, his mother (Bo Derek) is Gertrude, in reality married to his “step brother” (Rob Lowe) who is Claudius. David Spade’s character is Horatio.
jN7Jp Today I learned that the word "webinar" is trademarked.
166ld TIL about the Baghdad Batteries. In 1938 twelve jars with copper cylinders and iron rods were found in Iraq. The jars when combined with grape juice produce approximately 1 volt of electricity. It is hypothesized these were the first batteries ever created, over two thousand years ago.
4XOaX TIL of the Floppotron, a "robot orchestra" made from obsolete drives and scanners whose stepper motors are run at different speeds to produce musical tones.
grZyb TIL that the world's oldest known message in a bottle was discovered on an Australian beach, having been thrown into the ocean over 132 years ago by a German ship's crew as part of a scientific experiment.