› added 3 years ago

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TIL of the ‘Window Tax’, where people were taxed based on the number of windows they had on their houses. This was used in the 18th century as a simple method to calculate tax obligations. However, many people bricked up their windows, leading to health problems.

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m1PbO TIL BBC executives had decided not to air the pilot of the sitcom Are You Being Served but needed filler material to broadcast when the 1972 Summer Olympics were interrupted by the Munich Massacre. The show went on to run for 10 seasons and spawned a movie and a 2 season spinoff series
OG8PX TIL in the 19th century there were professional "knocker uppers" who would hit your window with a stick until you got out of bed.
k7Vg TIL Lunar dust smells like gunpowder
e0GQD TIL Pinocchio effect is when a person lies, they experience an increase in temperature around the nose and in the orbital muscle in the corner of the eye
BgLyr TIL a high school student wrote a text-based moon landing simulation in 1969 using a PDP-8 minicomputer. It was "a question and answer game" - at each stage of the landing you'd find out your current velocity and then you had to enter how much fuel to use. If you burned fuel too early, you'd crash.