› added 8 years ago

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TIL that the grand boulevards of Paris were built in the mid-1800s partly to make it harder for rioters and revolutionaries to barricade the streets like they had in earlier uprisings

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rQw4 TIL AIDS was once known as the “4H Disease”, as it affected heroin addicts, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and Haitians
p8GA4 TIL The Windows XP wallpaper was so expensive FedEx refused to ship it and was hand-delivered to Microsoft by the photographer himself
b9EK7 TIL The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences used to give out an Academy Juvenile Award, complete with a miniature statue. Shirley Temple was the first and youngest to win the award at the age of 6 in 1934. Mickey Rooney was the oldest to win at 18. Hayley Mills was the last to win in 1960.
KOeXB TIL that in the 1930s, the first pregnancy tests were done through injecting a woman’s urine into an infantile mouse, which would then be dissected so its ovaries can be inspected. If the woman was pregnant, the mouse would show signs of ovulation.
LkAEV TIL in 1981 Dean Koontz wrote a book "The Eyes of Darkness". The chapter 39 it mentions a Chinese military lab outside of the city of Wuhan, where a deadly virus is invented as part of the country's biological weapons warfare programme. Owing to the lab's location, the virus is named 'Wuhan-400'.