› added 9 years ago

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TIL in contrast to the Maya, who liked their chocolate warmed, the Aztecs drank it cold, seasoning it with a broad variety of additives, including the petals of the Cymbopetalum penduliflorum tree, chile pepper, allspice, vanilla, and honey.

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9wZY6 TIL that Barry Sanders' own father asserted that Jim Brown was the greatest runningback ever, and at Barry's HOF induction called him the third best RB ever and barely praised his own son.
0wXYp TIL I learned why we can “smell metals” when they don’t have a significant vapour pressure, sublimating etc. We smell the reaction of oils in our skin with the metal, producing detectable byproducts such as ketones, not the metal itself.
D1Zvr TIL that there is a man called José Salvador Alvarenga who holds the Guinness World Record for longest time being lost at sea. He was lost for 438 days in a boat that was about 7 meters long and almost one meter wide. He survived by eating raw fish, turtles and birds and by drinking rain water.
MeLEB TIL In 1990 Disney wanted to put Minnie Mouse on the $5 bill of their in house currency and promote it as the first woman on a dollar bill. It was then revealed that Martha Washington on a $1 bill in 1891. In reality Pocahontas was even earlier, appearing on a $20 bill in 1863.
VMAap TIL the Himba tribe in Namibia has no word for the color blue. In research, when shown 11 green squares and 1 blue, they couldn't pick out which was different. The research suggests that without a way of identifying the color as different, it's harder for our eyes to notice it.