› added 4 years ago

71

TIL of the Eidophone, an instrument which created images from the interaction of voice and materials. Inventor Margaret Watts-Hughes, a Welsh singer, was working with a device similar to Bell's Photophone when she noticed perfect geometrical patterns formed according to clarity and calibre of voice.

Read more publicdomainreview.org

via reddit.com

g5gX TIL one of the most successful interrogaters in Nazi Germany, Hanns Scharff, preferred freindliness over torture.
4kmOR TIL of the Great Donor Show, a controversial reality TV show from 2007 where a terminally ill woman intended to donate a kidney to one of 25 participants. The show was staged, with the ultimate motive of increasing the amount of donors, a goal in which it succeeded. The show won an emmy
4J7N TIL Cambyses II of Persia used cats to fight a battle. Against the Egyptians in the battle of Pelusium in 525 BC he ordered his men to paint cats on their shields and brought 100’s of cats to his front lines. The Egyptian archers refused to fire on the cats as injuring one was punishable by death.
4Djg TIL Fritz Haarman ran a butcher shop in post World War I Germany where he sold inexpensive meat to impoverished customers. Some were suspicious of his low prices and discovered he had murdered up to 50 boys and men and ground their bodies into sausage.
J88j TIL “Bill Nye the Science Guy” was cancelled after 20 years because due to “Hollywood accounting” the producers had never shown a profit