Post * xVaRb — Curious Curator

› added 7 years ago

106

TIL Volkswagen used slave labor from Nazi concentration camps to produce their cars during the war.

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VMggG TIL that one third of all motels in the U.S. are owned by Indians with the last name ‘Patel.’

Z8KP4 TIL that in WWII, an Australian soldier removed his own appendix in the middle of a Philippine jungle in 1944, without any anaesthetic and with only the use of a mirror and an ordinary knife. The operation took 4 and a half hours and he stitched himself up with jungle fibre.

E1EDx TIL that the town of Honiton U.K, has a "Hot Penny Day", a parade where children collect thrown coins. The tradition was purportedly started by wealthy people, whom would heat pennies on a stove, throw them into the streets, and laugh at the peasants burning their fingers while picking them up.

X0EgR TIL about "mundane science fiction," a sci-fi literary movement driven by creating plausible extensions of existing science and technology; situating stories on Earth or within the Solar System, thereby lacking the use of interstellar or intergalactic travel; and not considering contact with aliens.

5YPaB TIL Carl Sagan's team wanted to include the Beatles song "Here Comes the Sun" on the Voyager Golden Records (discs containing greetings in 60 languages, music and sounds from Earth aboard both Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977), but the record company EMI, which held the copyrights, declined.