› added 1 month ago

15

TIL Antarctica has a full-time professional fire department, and maintains about 46 staff.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

pYEOp TIL of Trofim Lysenko, an influential Soviet scientist who rejected genetics in favor of his own idiosyncratic, pseudoscientific ideas. These ideas led to catastrophic famines in the Soviet Union that killed millions of people, and was also adapted in China to similarly calamitous results.
a8M1A TIL Winston Churchill would attend Shakespeare plays and recite the lines along with the actors from the front row. Richard Burton, playing Hamlet at the Old Vic theatre, tried to shake Churchill by changing the speed of his delivery, but Churchill stayed with him the whole way.
mOPy TIL that in 1669, Hennig Brand discovered phosphorus by boiling down urine and heating the residue to very high temperatures. He was trying to make gold though, and he hoped that the yellow color of urine meant there was gold in it.
l7pkB TIL about black supremacy
9PaQ TIL the Ottoman Empire enslaved children, educated them and gave them the most important positions in the empire.