› added 10 years ago

359

TIL that Europeans did not know anything about potatoes, tomatoes, chili peppers, chocolate, corn, peanuts and vanilla until the “discovery” of the Americas.

Read more americanfood.about.com

via reddit.com

epr75 TIL that in ancient Athens, it was illegal for a person to hit a slave who did not belong to him, because it was difficult to tell a citizen from a slave by appearance alone. So if it were legal to hit another person's slave, then people would end up mistakenly hitting citizens on a regular basis.
xVA9B TIL that the 365-day calendar we use today was invented by the ancient Egyptians.
ADWv4 TIL Spielberg initially considered making Schindler's List entirely in German and Polish, but decided "there's too much safety in reading [subtitles]. It would have been an excuse [for the audience] to take their eyes off the screen and watch something else."
WR5Y TIL of a British Marine who flung himself back-first onto a grenade to save his comrades. Though the explosion threw him in the air, his rucksack absorbed the blast and he walked away with a nosebleed and a headache
BrByk TIL that cellulite is more of a secondary sexual characteristic than a condition, almost all adult women have it, and there's no healthy or reasonable way to get rid of it