› added 10 years ago

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TIL that the IKEA HQ in Delft, Netherlands had to stop offering their €1,- breakfast during the weekends because the highways couldn’t handle the traffic it attracted.

Z8rko TIL about the mysterious worldwide epidemic of Encephalitis lethargica. The disease attacks the brain, leaving some victims in a statue-like condition, speechless and motionless. Between 1915 and 1926, 500,000 dead or incapacitated from it. It disappeared as mysteriously as it came in to the world.
wLBMW TIL that Catherine De Medici maintained 80 ladies-in-waiting, whom she allegedly used as tools to seduce courtiers for political ends. They were known as her "flying squadron". She also used them as a court attraction. In 1577, she threw a banquet at which the food was served by topless women.
PY7oZ TIL that Jesus could have owned a pair of scissors - "The earliest known scissors appeared in Mesopotamia 3,000 to 4,000 years ago".
yQw48 TIL The concept of zeppelin travel was so popular in the early 1900s that many buildings advertised zeppelin docks as marketing ploys, circulating misleading photos. But other than a 3-minute publicity stunt in New York, no zeppelin has ever truly docked to a building & loaded/unloaded passengers.
OG6ae TIL: Ants invented agriculture 50-60 million years ago, right around the time that the first primates appear in the fossil record. These ants cultivate a domesticated fungus for food in underground greenhouses and tend to it through watering, weeding, and pest/disease control.