litux

litux t1_jachzu6 wrote

Reply to TIL that the Slurpee was invented by accident when a Dairy Queen owner would provide frozen soda, from a cooler, to customers when his soda fountain would break down. The owner, Omar Knedlik, improvised the Icee machine out of car parts, which was eventually licensed by 7-11, to become the Slurpee. by jdward01

The guy's name is a linguistic rollercoaster.

"Omar" can be an Arabic name, but also a variant of Germanic name "Othmar", which, looking at the guy's pic and bio, sounds more plausible.

"Knedlik" is a Czech word for Knödel, a Central European boiled dumpling.

The whole name sounds like Mustafa Pierog or Muhammad Schnitzel.

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litux t1_iybyp0p wrote

Reply to comment by Owlmoose in TIL the small Pacific island of Niue uses legal tender coins which depict characters from Disney, Pokémon, Peanuts, Star Wars, and more. by CeasarYouLater

I guess that depends on how you determine who counts as Niuean.

According to this article, the nations with the relatively biggest diasporas are the Guyanese (36.4 %) and the Bosnians (34 %).

https://www.statista.com/chart/4237/the-countries-with-the-most-people-living-overseas/

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litux t1_iyaaukl wrote

Reply to comment by herbw in TIL that a month before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany's government attempted to order an arrest of about 86,000 people by COMPUTER1313

> Egon Krenz, East Germany’s last hard-line Communist leader, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison after 115 days of testimony and evidence in what has come to be known here as “the Politburo trial.” >; > “The defense of the border was placed above human life” in Krenz’s system, presiding Judge Josef Hoch said in a verdict that took two hours to read. > > Two other former Politburo members, Guenther Kleiber and Guenther Schabowski, received sentences of three years each, as Germany continues the slow and difficult process of sorting out blame and punishment for the woes and crimes of the former East Germany. > > Although the Politburo, once the most powerful body in the East German system, consisted of 22 members, few of those have stood or probably will stand trial. Some have been deemed too old or too sick; for others, there has been a lack of admissible evidence. The Politburo trial started out with six defendants, but three were allowed to drop out because of frailty and ill health. > > To further frustrate justice-seekers in Germany’s post-Cold War era, other top Eastern officials have been tried but acquitted because their activities, however inhumane, were legal under East German law. > > https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-26-mn-26083-story.html

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litux t1_iy3xi4y wrote

Reply to comment by Markaes4 in TIL after her death, Mercy Brown's heart and liver were burned and the ashes mixed into a tonic that was given to her sick brother to drink. Her father believed that she was a vampire and that the tonic would cure the brother of tuberculosis. It didn't; he died two months later. by NightVisible3767

>I had hot tub lung that lasted 6 months and that sucked too

Huh, TIL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersensitivity_pneumonitis

Not sure if I actually wanted to learn about this.

I hope you're OK now!

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litux t1_ixelyoa wrote

Reply to comment by DepthExternal6034 in TIL one of the proposed scientific names of Neanderthals was Homo Stupidus by Thylocine

In case you were not joking:

> From Middle French stupide, from Latin stupidus (“struck senseless, amazed”), from stupeō (“be amazed or confounded, be struck senseless”), from Proto-Indo-European [(s)tup-](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/(s)tup-&action=edit&redlink=1), [(s)tewp-](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/(s)tewp-) (“to wonder”), from Proto-Indo-European [*(s)tew-](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/(s)tew-) (“to stand, stay”). Cognate with Old High German stubarōn (“to be astonished, be stunned, be blocked”). Related also to Old English stoppian (“to block, stop”). See stop. > > https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stupid

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litux t1_ittkxz0 wrote

Reply to comment by 5-On-A-Toboggan in TIL That Matt Bissonnette, the former DEVGRU operator who, under the pseudonym Mark Owen, wrote the first book about the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden was forced to turn over the almost $7 million he made from the book because he failed to get the book approved before it was published. by GentPc

Huh, TIL.

I had no idea that the convoy was stopped by NATO aircraft.

Although, since you mentioned the official narrative...

> According to their statement, NATO was not aware at the time of the strike that Gaddafi was in the convoy. NATO stated that, in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, it does not target individuals, but only military assets that pose a threat. NATO later learned "from open sources and Allied intelligence" that Gaddafi was in the convoy and that the strike was likely to have contributed to his capture and therefore his death. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Muammar_Gaddafi

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