› added 11 years ago

81

TIL Anderson Cooper is the great-great-great grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

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M8QW TIL That the Dutch East India Company was the most valuable company in history. Worth 78 Million Dutch Guilders, adjusted to dollars it was worth $7.4 TRILLION.
OG46Y TIL of the Erfurt Latrine Disaster. During a meeting called by Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, the second floor of the cathedral collapsed. 60 German nobles died when they fell through the first floor into the latrine cesspit below. Many died drowning in liquid excrement.
ep6JJ TIL that despite the popular belief that SOS stands for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls", it actually doesn't stand for anything. SOS was developed because it was an easy sequence of letters to remember in Morse Code (three dots, three dashes, three dots).
m1Y4x TIL that through much of the history of agriculture, threshing was time-consuming and laborious. Until the late 18th century, before threshing was mechanized, about one-quarter of agricultural labor was devoted to it.
wom16 TIL That, in order to fight the Great Depression, FDR moved Thanksgiving to earlier in November so as to give Americans an extra week of Christmas shopping.