"TIL most living areas in ancient Roman Cities lacked any kitchen area, with most citizens either getting food from from a communal kitchen or buying prepared foods from street vendors."
"TIL between 1999 and 2015, 736 UK Post Office workers were wrongly convicted for stealing money due to faulty accounting software. Workers were forced to pay back nonexistent losses with their own money and some were even sent to jail for a crime they did not commit."
"TIL A 2023 study found that Chinstrap penguins take over 10,000 micro-naps a day, each lasting 4 seconds. When combined, that totals more than 11 hours of sleep daily. They are also generally considered to be the most aggressive and ill-tempered species of penguin."
"TIL in 2011 a woman was buried alive in a cardboard box by her fiancé after he attacked her with a stun gun then bound & gagged her with tape because he was "bored" with her & wanted custody of their son. She used her engagement ring to cut herself free & pull the box apart before flagging down help."
"TIL about Terry Wallis, who spent 19 years in a minimally conscious state following a 1984 car accident, suddenly spoke “Mom” on June 11, 2003, making him the longest documented coma‑like recovery with regained consciousness."
"TIL Craigslist generated $302 million of revenue in 2024 with no spending on marketing or advertising and no sales team."
"TIL dogs began to diverge from wolves when random genetic mutations gave some wolves the ability to much more effectively digest starches and fats, causing them to follow nomadic humans and eat the leftovers of the food they ate."
"TIL that Timothy Dexter (a wealthy but eccentric businessman) faked his death to see how many people would attend his funeral. Over 3,000 mourners showed up, but he revealed the ruse after berating his wife for not mourning enough."
"TIL of Janet Parker from the University of Birmingham Medical School. She likely contracted smallpox via air ducts in her office via a lab where researchers kept samples. Within 4 weeks she was dead, her father died of a heart attack visiting her in the hospital and her boss cut his own throat."
"TIL that Nvidia founder Jensen Huang's parents sold nearly everything they owned to send him to what they thought was a prestigious boarding school but which was in fact a reformatory for troubled kids. He taught his 17-year-old roommate how to read in exchange for help working out."
"TIL Prince Charles & Princess Diana only met in person 13x before getting engaged and when they were asked if they were in love, Charles said "whatever in love means". Then on the night before their wedding, he reportedly told her that he didn't love her in order to get everything out in the open."
"TIL in Ohio, convicted drunk drivers are mandated to drive with “Party Plates”, special red-on-yellow license plates in exchange for limited driving privileges such as work."
"TIL that a British married couple survived almost 4 months adrift in the Pacific Ocean on a rubber raft. They survived drinking rainwater and eating raw fish and birds."
"TIL that pencils were invented after a massive deposit of solid graphite was discovered in England, being the only place in the world with pieces large enough to cut into solid rods. England's monopolies over these lead other countries to smuggle graphite and recycle graphite powder."
"TIL in 1967, Singapore experienced a mass panic over shrinking genitals; hundreds of men ran to hospitals convinced their penises were retracting into their bodies due to “genital retraction syndrome”."
"TIL that Samoa is the country with the highest obesity rate in the world. More than 81% of the adults in the nation are obese."
"TIL that the first journalist to report the outbreak of the Second World War was a rookie British reporter on her very first week on the job. While travelling along the German–Polish border, she spotted thousands of troops, tanks, and artillery massed for invasion."
"TIL that in 1964, performance artist Dorothy Podber asked to “shoot” Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe paintings. Believing she wanted to photograph them, Warhol agreed - until she drew a gun and fired. One damaged “Shot Marilyn” sold in 2022 for $195M, a 20th-century art auction record."
"TIL New York City used eminent domain to tear down a landlord's building but accidentally left his family with a small triangle of land. The city asked the family to donate the land, but the family instead made a small plaque to commemorate the tiny chunk of land they still owned, the Hess Triangle."
"TIL that James H. Salisbury, the inventor of Salisbury steak, was an early proponent of germ theory and invented his steak to prevent diarrhea."
“He believed vegetables and starchy foods produced poisonous substances in the digestive system which were responsible for heart disease, tumors, mental illness and tuberculosis.”
"TIL 12-14% of people are thought to have borderline intellectual function, somewhere between disabled and average."
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Boring
He’s smarter than you.
- Bread.
- Apples.
- Very small rocks.
- Cider!
- Great gravy.
- Cherries.
- Mud.
- Churches.
- Lead.
If she weighs the same as a duck
She's made of wood - And, therefore
- A witch! - A witch!
#37 It's just the lower end of the bell curve. The upper end are the highly intellectual, so there obviously also must be an opposite of that.