› added 6 years ago

112

TIL Socrates claimed all his wisdom came from a voice in his head that told him what not to do but never what to do. The reason he was arrested wasn't just that he did not believe in Athen's gods, but that he presented this voice in his head as a new god.

lojXr TIL: Pozole, a traditional soup with hominy, used to be prepared with human meat. After the Conquest cannibalism was banned and pork was used instead because of its similarities to human meat.
pYPpp TIL in 1937 Jewish Paul Lamfrom owned the largest shirt company in Germany. It was seized by the Nazis and he fled to Portland, Oregon and started a hat company named after the local river, that company became Columbia Sportswear.
XN8R TIL that a famous study – showing that people supposedly do better on “trick” questions when printed in a blurry font, which makes them concentrate – was debunked as an artifact of small sample size. (The study was cited in Nobel-Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking Fast and Slow.”)
6ylw TIL The abandonment of city streetcar systems in the mid-twentieth century led to accusations of conspiracy which held that a union of automobile, oil, and tire manufacturers shut down the streetcar systems in order to further the use of buses and automobiles.
pY7n8 TIL I learned about the State Partnership Program (SPP), a program in which U.S states partner up with one or two foreign countries by sending their respective National Guards to assist with training and humanitarian aid (Ex: California and Ukraine, Illinois and Poland, Texas and Egypt, etc).