this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
575 points (97.4% liked)

Today I Learned

17691 readers
2144 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 135 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Monks did most of the writing and artwork.

Monks main diet was brassicas.

They grew their own food.

Do the math, it's wish fulfillment

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 48 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Brassica, it is ALWAY brassica.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Mate, when a full monastery is blowing the covers off every night to the sound of foghorns i care little for correct plurality

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 29 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I read their response not as "The correct plural is brassica", but as "Friggin' everything is a brassica cultivar".

If you didn't know: cabbage, kale, broccoli, kohlrabi, brussels sprouts, collard greens and cauliflower are all selectively bred cultivars of the same species.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] JungleJim@sh.itjust.works 22 points 10 months ago

I think you're really on to something here, if you don't work in history or something, you should run this by a historian or scholar and see what they think

[–] weariedfae@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

This makes so much sense, is there any evidence? I don't want to spread the rumor as a fun fact unless there's something behind it. Very fun idea!

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] InfiniteFlow@lemmy.world 101 points 10 months ago (4 children)
[–] lemmie689@lemmy.sdf.org 53 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Ahhh...this explains the rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

[–] doctorcrimson@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The snails also explain an odd event in Runescape while doing the Temple Trekking minigame. Now that I think it, Runescape also has a historically accurate fascination with Brassicas like Cabbages, which would correlate with a historically accurate aversion to snails.

[–] Klear@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 months ago

That movie is shockingly historically accurate.

[–] Hubi@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago (4 children)

That's the kind of thing I doodle in my notepad when I'm bored during a call.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] ElBarto@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Imagine getting beaten with a stick by a rabbit as his friend robs you, while your friend draws it for historical archive.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (4 children)

He's not robbing the guy, he's peeling the skin off his foot(!)

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 79 points 10 months ago (5 children)

The exact same thing will happen hundreds of years from now with amogus memes and ~~:.|:;~~

[–] Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.world 31 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is there a god damn font character for loss??

[–] ThisIsFuz@lemmy.world 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Took me a bit to work it out but it's :.|:; with a strike through. Bloody genius haha

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Aussiemandeus@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago (3 children)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 72 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I saw this years ago and I still think it was primitive office humor. Snails ate delicious plants and there were probably monks waging a war against them. The incredulity of fighting so hard against an enemy so weak was funny.

[–] butterflyattack@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago

This seems like a plausible explanation, but I'd maybe expect to see a few giant slugs and caterpillars - these are at least as damaging to crops as snails.

[–] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

Im betting they got all done up in their armor and went to fight in muddy battlefields, and when they were not fighting the enemy they were dealing with snails crawling inside the armor and being all slimy and disgusting crawling between the knights legs and the armor.

[–] gibmiser@lemmy.world 69 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] NounsAndWords@lemmy.world 65 points 10 months ago (4 children)
[–] kboy101222@sh.itjust.works 13 points 10 months ago

First boss of Shadow of the Erdtree

[–] gibmiser@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] athos77@kbin.social 42 points 10 months ago (9 children)

A few hundred years from now, historians are going to be equally confused by the horse-sized duck images ...

[–] Zorque@kbin.social 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And why there are so many pictures of bananas next to things.

[–] athos77@kbin.social 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"We hypothesize that the bananas of the 21st century were a different type, one that grew in a wider range of climates. We're not certain why this breed seem to have randomly fallen from the trees so often, but perhaps it helps explain all these other drawings of inattentive humans slipping on random banana peels as well. ... "

[–] Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (5 children)

... Actually the lore behind banana peel gags is more interesting than you think. They were a super cheap snack in Victorian London and the bananas they had were the gros Michel cultivar which had really thick slippery peels and a lack of general cuture of actually throwing garbage in the bin meant that a lot of them rotted on the street so early comedy stage acts started using them as a gag because slipping on them was a common sometimes life threatening hazard.

But because art borrows from art the banana peel gag outlasted the cultural problem that sparked it by over a century.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

There was this thing going around my work where people would caption a nuke explosion with a mention of a certain guy using the microwave again. There was an incident with a break room microwave. Now imagine if that survives and a thousand years passes.

We believe the one called Gary was a deity of all things nuclear to these people.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] EtherWhack@lemmy.world 37 points 10 months ago

Not friends of the gentle racing snails? How sad...

[–] greenmarty@lemmy.world 30 points 10 months ago

Imagine future civilization digging out some of today's memes...

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 29 points 10 months ago

Ye olde memes.

[–] SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net 29 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Well, do you see any giant snails around? No? Then thank those knights

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] SlothMama@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, it would be amazing if the answer was that large mollusks actually existed and were poorly documented.

[–] spongebue@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

And just like... Disintegrated instead of fossilizing

[–] BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm not an expert by ANY means, but I think there needs to be strict conditions to make fossils. I think most bones just eventually turn to dust

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] SlothMama@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

The bodies yes, the shells I imagine were fashioned into exceptional armor locked in ancient vaults.

[–] Cannacheques@slrpnk.net 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Because they probably had a great sense of humour, comedy clubs and memes back then too, but hey let's ignore that for just a moment to imagine how hardcore a knight you would have to be to fight off Cthulhu snails

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Did they also take that challenge with the immortal snail?

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Plot twist: its actually the same person making the snail memes today, yet to be caught and looking for new ways to stay one step ahead of the snail

[–] IndiBrony@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago (3 children)

one step ahead of the snail

I dare say it shouldn't be very hard to stay one step ahead of a snail.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

I think we know the real answer.

Humanity was ruled by giant snails and their hyper intelligent queen, and it was only through the bravery of these fine knights were our shackles cast off and the mollusk menace thrown down.

And, in great effort to hide our collective shame, all knowledge about this was intentionally purged, Save for a few manuscripts who managed to be overlooked or were kept in hiding, so hints of humanities true history would be known.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] Lophostemon@aussie.zone 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh dear. I read that as ‘fisting’ at first.

I picked the wrong day to give up sniffing glue.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago

"And if you join our ranks today, they never will!"

-Me, while extending my hand out in invitation for YOU READING THIS to join the...

Associated

Society of

Snail

Hunters and

Ancient

Truth

Seekers

...yes, I know. Yes, we're technically the "A.S.S.H.A.T.S."... Yes very funny, okay, have your moment... It's a secret society okay, so it doesn't actually even come up, nobody will know, it's fine.... IT'S FINE.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

It's fun to draw. Mine were cowboys fighting snails.

[–] CheeryLBottom@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

Garden warfare!

[–] darklypure@kbin.social 10 points 10 months ago

Gardeners... Nuff said

load more comments
view more: next ›