› added 3 years ago

558

TIL when kerosene disrupted whale oil for lamps, two companies—Lever Brothers and Margarine Unie—discovered how to harden whale oil into margarine. They bought up all the whale oil, met with success and are a $150B corporation today, better known as Unilever!

Read more atlasobscura.com

via reddit.com

m1XbR TIL that Tootsie Rolls have been made with the same recipe since its invention in 1896, which requires the previous day's candy batch to be incorporated into each new batch. Theoretically, this means that there's a bit of the first Tootsie Roll in each piece of newly produced Tootsie Rolls everyday.
VBQ90 TIL That Ball Corp, famous for it's mason jars, is the world's largest producer of aluminum beverage cans, producing over 112 billion cans per year.
al7J TIL Reagan and Gorbachev Agreed to Pause the Cold War in Case of an Alien Invasion
Br5ne TIL Alberta has no rats due to serious rat control policies, including a $5000 fine for having a rat. In 2004 someone released 38 rats in Calgary but by the time the rat control officers arrived the local residents had already formed an armed posse and hunted them down with brooms, 2x4s, and shovels
x0e0 TIL Mongolia has a navy consisting of one ship, crewed by 7 sailors, of which only one can swim.