Today

W7WRA TIL that starting in the 1700s, travelers routinely wore fabric belts to prevent disease by keeping their stomachs warm. Later called “cholera belts”, this practice continued through WW1, long after the bacterial origin of cholera was discovered in the 1850s.
R5QxQ Today I learned that a centaur (type of asteroid) was discovered in 2013 to have rings. 10199 Chariklo was the first minor planet discovered with rings and has two narrow icy-particle rings.
woQl1 TIL the Fall Armyworm moth is currently splitting into two separate species.
69OYJ TIL that Jules Verne’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon accurately predicted aspects of space travel, including launching from Florida and the Moon’s distance, a century before the actual moon landings.
OGmkR TIL that half of the Earth's subsurface heat comes from radioactive decay, while the other half is still left over from when the Earth formed
X0Rw8 TIL that Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri, at 1326 acres, is 500 acres larger than New York City's Central Park. Forest Park hosted both the Summer Olympics & Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair in the same year in 1904.
VB9W8 TIL 80s horror host Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) was the successor to an earlier character named Vampira (Maila Nurmi) from the 1950s. The network wanted to reboot The Vampira Show, but had to replace Maila as she quit the project. Maila actually sued Cassandra for copying her character, and lost.
epYEJ TIL When Vince McMahon was in charge of the WWE, the word 'wrestling' and other variations of it were banned. Wrestlers weren't allowed to say these words on TV.
P1yJE TIL that in anticipation for architect I.M Pei’s 1964 master plan for Downtown Oklahoma City, OK, 447 buildings were demolished to clear land for the project. By the mid 1970s little of the plan was implemented & in 1988 the master plan was officially abandoned.
8eVJa TIL Tom and Jerry were originally named Jasper and Jinx. There was later a contest to name them. Animator John Carr won $50 (more than $800 in today's cash) for coming up with the names Tom and Jerry. They were named after a cocktail.
l7dR7 TIL Helen Keller was one of the co-founders of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and met 13 US presidents in her lifetime.
NXDAe TIL that Tettyo Saito is the first Japanese writer to write and publish in the Romanian language. However, Saito has never been to Romania; he reached fluency with the language partly through Romanian films and friend requesting 4000 Romanians on Facebook.