TIL "hole watcher" is an actual job title. Their job is to ensure the safety of people working in holes or other confined spaces are safe by ensuring proper ventilation, and rescue them if they happen to get stuck, hurt, or pass out from the lack of oxygen. [Source]

Occupational Health and Safety Blog

What's Hole Watcher? 10 Key Responsibilities Of A Hole Watchers

Discover the essential role of hole watchers & their 10 key responsibilities in ensuring workplace safety.

TIL when Mentos makers saw a chemistry teacher create a soda geyser several feet high by dropping Mentos into Diet Coke on the Late Show. They devised a consumer misuse campaign encouraging user-generated videos and signing content creators to create a trend that acheive a 20% sales spike. [Source]

NBC News

Unintended Consequences: How Consumer Misuse Can Boost Sales

The maker of Mentos saw dollar signs with the user discovery that the candy exploded in Diet Coke. You should encourage consumers to tinker with your products.

TIL that a 'needs repair' US supercomputer with 8,000 Intel Xeon CPUs and 300TB of RAM was won via auction by a winning bid of $480,085.00. [Source]

TIL there is a mummified forest of redwood trees on a Canadian island in the high Arctic close to the North Pole. Some of the trees were up to 140 feet tall and grew during a warm period in the earth's history, despite 3 full months of darkness each year. [Source]

www.canada.ca

The Fossil Forest of Axel Heiberg Island - Canada.ca

TIL Juliane de Fontevrault, the illegitimate daughter of King Henry I of England, tried to kill him with a crossbow after he permitted the blinding of her daughters, his grandchildren, who were hostages at the time. [Source]

Wikipedia

Juliane de Fontevrault

12th-century illegitimate daughter of King Henry I of England

TIL that Aruba ??, a small Dutch Caribbean island of 110k people, is one of the most diverse islands of the Caribbean. Being home to over 130 nationalities and 1/3 of it's population being foreign born. 75% of Arubans are of mixed European, Native and African descent. [Source]

TIL Neanderthal used penicillin and aspirin 40,000 years before modern use. [Source]

NBC News

Neanderthal used early version of penicillin and aspirin

Scientists got a sneak peek into the kitchen of three Neanderthals by scraping off the plaque stuck on their teeth and examining the DNA.

TIL from 1970 to 2015, The Sun published a picture of a topless female model on its page 3 [Source]

Wikipedia

Page 3

former British tabloid tradition of topless models on the third page

TIL that Bill Murray did not sign a contract while agreeing to play the lead in Lost In Translation. Director Sofia Coppola then proceeded to spend a quarter of the film's budget without knowing if Murray would follow through and expressed relief when he finally showed up. [Source]

Wikipedia

Lost in Translation (film)

2003 film directed by Sofia Coppola

TIL Ancient Egyptians tested for pregnancy by having potential moms urinate on bags containing wheat and barley; if they sprouted shortly after it was a sign of pregnancy. A 1963 study reproduced the results as 70% accurate. [Source]