› added 10 months ago

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TIL that in 1998, Frito-Lay released their WOW! line of potato chips, marketed as “fat free” by being cooked in Olestra, an indigestible synthetic fat. It caused severe gastrointestinal problems including the now infamous “anal leakage”

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via reddit.com

wxlJ TIL there is a 99 year old panhandler in Bulgaria that gives all of the money he collects to local orphanages, once giving over $24,000 in a single donation.
A9od TIL Ng Mui, a legendary Shaolin nun, met a teenage girl named Yim Wing-Chun who was being harrassed into marrying a thug and taught her how to defend herself. Hundreds of years later, Bruce Lee would learn what is now called Wing-Chun, a form which was specifically made for a woman by a woman.
Vpg4 TIL Henry Ford created a car made almost entirely out of plastic. It weighed 30% less than standard cars, could withstand 10 times the damage and ran on ethanol instead of gas. The design never caught on.
negkd TIL the blacknose dace, now one of the most widespread fish in the eastern US, suffered a severe range contraction during the Ice Age and was restricted to a single area: what is now modern-day Connecticut. After the Ice Age ended, the dace recolonized the whole East Coast in as little as 75 years.
OpeY TIL that a bridge built in 2003 in northern Costa Rica is colloquially known as ‘Backstab Bridge’. It was paid for, designed and built by Taiwan only for Costa Rica to cut off ties with Taiwan in favour of China.