› added 11 months ago

123

TIL Shogun Tokugawa leyasu decreed William Adams(first western samurai) was dead and that Miura Anjin, a samurai, was born. This action "freed" Adams to serve the Shogunate permanently, making Adams' wife in England a widow. Adams managed to send regular support payments to her after 1613.

Read more williamadams.fr

via reddit.com

gMVvX TIL Imperial Germany had made plans to invade the US between 1897 and 1903 just to gain some Carribean colonies.
mx7Jo TIL some Hungarians refuse to clink beer glasses, as Austrians supposedly did this in 1849 after executing Hungarian rebels. The unofficial ban on clinking beer glasses was 150 years, but many still continue—others maintain the tradition was only popularized by winemakers trying to boost wine sales.
ZpWjY TIL that the phrase “mad as a hatter” comes from 18th- and 19th-century hat makers who suffered mercury poisoning from the chemicals used in felt production, leading to tremors, hallucinations, and erratic behavior.
ebpD TIL that a physicist was threatened with 80 years in prison for “sharing U.S secretes” with China. It was later found that he had permission to share the info, and had even been asked by the National Science Foundation to form a coalition with other Chinese scientists.
A80n TIL that in Japan, fake food (called sampuru from the English “sample”) is a multi-billion yen industry. The replicas, which are made of plastic and typically cost 10 or 20 times the amount of the food they imitate, are mostly handmade by trained artists in an almost century-old tradition.