TIL that pornography addiction is not a scientifically recognized medical condition [Source]
TIL The seventh cholera pandemic that began in 1961 is still ongoing today. [Source]
TIL the founder of Gillette was a utopian socialist who believed all industry should be run by a single publicly owned corporation and that Americans ought to live in a giant city called Metropolis, powered by Niagara Falls. [Source]
TIL that the Indian contingent was one of the only two national teams to not salute Hitler during the 1936 olympics. The Indian Hockey team then went on to defeat Germany and win gold. [Source]
idrottsforum.org
When Indian athletes refused to “Heil Hitler” at Berlin Olympics
At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the Indians were the only contingent apart from the Americans not to perform the raised-arm salute as a mark of obeisance to the German Chancellor. British-loyalist newspapers were more focused on the defiant US contingent, making…
TIL during the Korean war, around 25% of the South Korean GDP was prostitution to U.S. soldiers. Korean government supported these camptown brothels, hoping the industry would boost regional economies [Source]
Joins
Former sex workers in fight for compensation
PYEONGTAEK, Gyeonggi - At 69, Cheon Chang-suk lives alone in a tiny cell with moss-covered walls. She starts her day by collecting recyclable materials off the streets of her neighborhood, items she redeems for less than 1 cent per kilo at local stor
TIL that Napoleon Bonaparte preferred simple dishes like roast chicken, fried potatoes, hot soup, poached eggs/omelets and macaroni to all the complicated gourmet dishes his chefs could have prepared. He rarely spent more than fifteen minutes at the table and often used his hands instead of utensils [Source]
Napoleon Cologne the Blog
Napoleon at the Table: a Gastronomic Paradox - Napoleon Cologne the Blog
Napoleon was anything but a gourmet. Yet it was under his reign that French gastronomy experienced its golden age!
TIL that KFC in France is just called KFC, but in Quebec they’ve translated it so it’s called PFK (Poulet Frit Kentucky) [Source]
Mashed
The Reason KFC Has A Different Name In Quebec
There's only one exception to the name: In Quebec, KFC goes by PFK, which stands for Poulet Frit Kentucky, or the French translation of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
TIL of Pastagate: in 2013 an inspector of the Quebec Office of the French Language sent a letter of warning to an Italian restaurant for using Italian words such as pasta, antipasti and calamari instead of their French equivalents [Source]
TIL France reprocess 96% of its spent nuclear fuel into new fuel and vitrifies most the rest. [Source]
TIL the Butterfly stroke was born from a rules technicality in Breaststroke [Source]
Encyclopedia Britannica
butterfly
The butterfly is a swimming stroke in which the arms are brought forward above the water and the legs kick in unison in an up-and-down (dolphin) motion. The butterfly is used mainly in competition, having evolved from the breaststroke in the mid-20th century.
TIL about Zipf's law: across most natural languages, the most common word appears roughly twice as often as the second most common, three times as often as the third, and so on. [Source]
TIL a 17-year-old girl from Pennsylvania once slept for 64 days (from Thanksgiving in 2012 into January 2013). On average, the teenager slept 18-19 hours a day and would only get up to eat while in a sleepwalking state that she wouldn't remember after the fact. [Source]
CBS News
17-year-old Pa. woman battles "Sleeping Beauty Syndrome"
Nicole Delien diagnosed with Kleine-Levein Syndrome; She once slept 64 days from Thanksgiving through January
TIL between 18%-25% of intellectually gifted students (at least 130 IQ) in the US fail to graduate from high school. [Source]
Today I Learned that Billy Idol had a 3 week party in Thailand that only ended when the army was called in. [Source]
TIL that during the Three Mile Island accident, two important status lights on a control panel were missed by a controller. One light was covered by a maintenance tag, while the other is theorized to have been blocked from the controller’s sight by his large belly. [Source]
TIL that Death Valley was supposedly named by a large group of gold prospectors who got lost in the valley for weeks. However, they were able to find fresh water sources and only one member of their party died. [Source]
TIL Weathermen Were Forbidden to Use the Term "Tornado" in Weather Forecasts until 1950 [Source]
Atlas Obscura
Until 1950, U.S. Weathermen Were Forbidden From Talking About Tornados
In the first half of the 20th century, tornados were all over the United States: destroying whole towns, screaming through the papers, tearing up the...
TIL that Eleanor of Aquitaine was blamed by her husband King Louis VII for failing to produce a male heir in their fifteen years together. After the annulment of their marriage, Eleanor would go on to have five sons with her second husband Henry II including Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland [Source]
TIL the ADSL broadband protocol is so robust it can transfer data at reasonable speed over a literal wet string [Source]
www.revk.uk
It's official, ADSL works over wet string
Broadband services are a wonderful innovation of our time, using multiple frequency bands (hence the name) to carry signals over wires (us...
TIL the Bernie Madoff victim compensation fund recovered almost 94% of the losses [Source]
the Guardian
Bernie Madoff compensation fund makes final payments
Tenth and final payment means the 40,000-plus Ponzi scheme victims will have recovered 93% of investment losses