› added 11 years ago

59

TIL, Al Gore graduated 25th in his class of 51, applied to only one college, Harvard, and was accepted.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

jErQ TIL that adding 10,000 years to the AD year count (i.e. 12014 for this year) gives us the Holocene Calender. It is an estimate of the number of years since the Neolithic Revolution, which is considered to have been the birth of civilization.
rRWVw TIL The vanilla orchid blooms for one day in a year and the flower is only fertile for 8-12 hours. Each flower must be pollinated by hand within that 12-hour window. Unsurprisingly vanilla is nearly as expensive as silver
d1wj TIL a 216-year old business in Dalton Massachusetts called Crane & Co. produces almost all of the paper used for US currency, as well as banknotes for many foreign countries
ADljn TIL Australian Public Service leaders implemented a "blind recruitment" experiment removing all indications of gender and ethnic background on applications in order to increase diversity in the work place. It had the opposite effect, causing less women and minorities to be hired.
4m9g TIL That there was an ancient group of people responsible for the bronze age collapse who appeared from nowhere, destroyed at least 3 empires, then disappeared again after being defeated by Egypt.