› added 4 months ago

16

TIL: Wife selling was a practice in England for almost 2 centuries with last incident being in 1913 where one was sold to a coworker for £1. It ended unhappy marriages as divorces were expensive. Eventually there were public auctions that the wife had to agree to. You can even buy back your wife.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

9wryr TIL in 2001, dulce de leche M&M's were introduced in five American cities with large Hispanic populations. The flavor never became popular with the Hispanic community, who preferred existing M&M's flavors, and it was discontinued in most areas by early 2003.
VMEy8 TIL that some chimpanzees have been observed sharpening sticks with their teeth and using them as spears to hunt small mammals.
W8Go TIL A UK university was fine £400,000 after 2 students were accidentally given a lethal dose of caffeine during a scientific experiment. Because of a misplaced decimal point on the phone used to calculate the caffeine dosage, they received 30g instead of the planned 0.3g. The lethal dose is 18g.
NZkJ TIL Rin-Tin-Tin, the canine movie star of the 1920s, was so popular that he supposedly got the most votes for Best Actor at the first ever Academy Awards. The Academy chose a human instead of Rin-Tin-Tin because they wanted the show to be taken seriously.
npNo TIL Former U.S President Jimmy Carter helped to reduce the Guinea Worm Disease cases from 3.5 million to 126. This disease is now at the brink of extinction.