› added 1 year ago

50

TIL about the Indiana Pi Bill, a proposed law in 1897 that would have made pi equal to 3.2. Passed unanimously in the Indiana House, it was stopped by a Purdue University mathematician.

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l7lDG TIL of the Erfurt latrine disaster where nobles of the Holy Roman Empire drowned in liquid excrement
YpREA TIL Sir Walter Raleigh, British explorer and historian, first brought the potato to Ireland and planted them at his Irish estate. His cooks, who had never cooked potato before, served the leaves and stems (which are poisonous) making everyone sick. Potatoes were then banned from the court.
KOwlJ TIL 34% of all the Prime Ministers of England since 1721 went to the same boarding school, Eton
MeWJ8 TIL about Ruth Belville, a woman who would "sell" people the current time. She did so by setting her clock to Greenwich mean time and then have people pay for the opportunity to adjust their own watches to it.
xVaxB TIL pop stars like Justin Timberlake sing "may" instead of "me' because it gives the impression that their performance is more powerful that it actually is. The 2000s trend was an attempt to co-opt the signifiers of intensity without actually needing to use them.