TIL New Yorkers leave over $100 million a year in unclaimed 5 cent bottle deposits ($139 million in 2021). Until 2009 the beer and soda distributors kept every cent of it. The state now takes 80% and

TIL that Charondas, a Greek lawmaker, issued a law that anyone who brought weapons into the Athenian Assembly would be executed. When 1 day after hunting, he arrived at the Assembly with his knife sti

TIL that ancient Assyrians used a “substitute king” ritual when an omen threatened the king. The real king went into hiding while a substitute took his place, and the substitute was later killed.

TIL that the Babylonians calculated the value of the square root of two to six decimal places more than 1500 years BC; this estimate was not bettered for nearly three thousand years, despite algorithm