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TIL of a machine lubricant called Thames Mud Butter, made from fats that were skimmed from the sewage effluent of late 19th century London.

Read more thamesfestivaltrust.org

via reddit.com

4Eva TIL that a scientific study concluded that Cow Tipping is impossible and an urban legend. Cows are hyper-aware of their surroundings and it takes 2,910 newtons of force to topple them over. They also sleep lying down.
PY8gn TIL of Audie Murphy who was awarded every military combat award for valor available from the U.S. Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism.
VBOO4 TIL Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis is exactly the way it was on April 4th, 1968, complete with bed and food tray, when Martin Luther King was shot. Room 306 was never rented again and preserved as The National Civil Rights Museum
rRZbe TIL that in the early 1940s a Mexican scientist named Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena created a color television system some considered better than any American system at the time. His work made it possible in the 1970s for NASA to transmit color photos of Jupiter from the Voyager satellite.
gMmZL TIL in Japan, establishments like banks & convenience stores visibly keep baseball-sized orange orbs behind the counter. These “anticrime color balls” are filled with bright pigment that burst on impact & are for employees to lob at robbers (or getaway vehicles) to improve the chance of arrest.