127 words TIL According to Haiti's Constitution, all Haitians, regardless of skin color, are to be considered black in the eyes of the law.
261 words TIL 8,000 Years Ago, 17 Women Reproduced for Every One Man | An analysis of modern DNA uncovers a rough dating scene after the advent of agriculture.
130 words TIL about H. Barry Jacobs, a Virginia business man who, in 1983, planned a business to buy and sell human organs on the open market. This led to the creation of the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, which outlawed selling organs for profit in the United States.
251 words TIL that Ethiopia has a unique calendar which is 7-8 years behind the rest of the world. The current year in Ethiopia is 2014.
137 words TIL "the Pikunii people of the western Great Plains and Rocky Mountain Front used fire carriers made of buffalo horns to carry burning coals from one camp to the next and to start a fire in the new camp... The fire provided spiritual and cultural continuity for the people."
117 words TIL that much of our understanding of early language development is derived from the case of an American girl (pseudonym Genie), a so-called feral child who was kept in nearly complete silence by her abusive father, developing no language before her release at age 13.
113 words TIL 61% of older millennials believe they’ll be working at least part-time during retirement
147 words TIL Catacomb saints are skeletons exhumed from Roman catacombs and decorated with gold and jewels to serve as "replacement relics" for those destroyed during the Protestant Reformation. It is unlikely that any of those skeletons are actually of the people they are reputed by tradition to be.
187 words TIL Mississippi, the poorest state, has 33,792 millionaires and 12 billionaires.
182 words TIL that according to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
162 words TIL David Spade didn’t attend his best friend Chris Farley’s funeral. This fuelled speculation that there was some falling out with Farley prior to his death. However, years later Spade revealed that his absence from the funeral was because he would have found it too emotionally difficult.
133 words TIL that people with dementia think that stuff like a black doormat isn’t a doormat, but a deep hole in the floor. Due to these visual perception problems, people with dementia avoid stepping the doormat, and this is sometimes used to keep them from leaving their care facilites.
144 words TIL GM recalled 800k cars in 2014 for faulty ignitions. The cars would shut off while being driven which meant drivers lost power steering/brakes, and the airbags wouldn't deploy. They knew about the problem since 2005 but never fixed it because it would be 'too expensive'. 124 people died.
155 words TIL the “X” in Christmas is not an omission of “Christ” but an abbreviation of the Greek spelling of Christ (Χριστός) that has been used for hundreds of years
373 words TIL Stone crabs aren't killed for their meat. You simply remove one claw and throw them back in. They will eventually regrow their claw making them a renewable resource.
139 words TIL Cats domesticated themselves. They existed unchanged until the Middle Ages; and even now are genetically extremely close to their ancestors.
127 words TIL that the earliest credible evidence of coffee-drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the middle of the 15th century and none before that.
240 words TIL in the coldest of Russia's northern towns, people will leave their cars running from Fall to Spring lest the car batteries freeze solid.
246 words TIL lesbian romance/erotica author Radclyffe uses speech-recognition software to 'write' her books instead of typing them.
242 words TIL Walton family is $250 billion as of 2021, making them the richest family in the world.