› added 10 years ago

118

TIL Rosacea, a skin disease found mainly in those of Northern European descent and also known as The Curse of the Celts, is actually an evolutionary adaptation acquired by ancestral Celtic people to fend off bacteria during seasonal periods of low ultraviolet levels.

Read more medicaljournals.se

via reddit.com

0wkZ1 TIL the London underground system, once advertised as a cool escape from hot weather, has been slowly heating up due to dissipated heat from trains braking being captured and retained by surrounding clay, a natural insulator.
xDLg TIL that Martin Van Buren was the only president that did not have English as his first language. He spoke Dutch.
78xxZ TIL that Michael Wise, a C17th organist of Salisbury Cathedral, claimed the Dean & Chapter “wrongly deflected cathedral monies.” In turn, they accused him of negligence, profanity, drunkenness, and “other excesses in his life & conversation.” He later died in a bizarre quarrel with a night watchman.
Wk4Zd TIL that in November of 1999, Kevin Smith attended a protest against his own movie: "Dogma." He even made it onto the local news, when the on-the-scene reporter asked him (not knowing it it was him) his thoughts on the movie. He responded: "I don't know, but I've been told, 'not good.'"
l7vE5 TIL windshield wipers were originally invented by Mary Anderson in 1903. They were originally intended to be used for trolley cars, but she could not get any companies to use them. Cadillac began using the invention on cars in 1922 but she did not profit from the invention as the patent had expired.