› added 12 years ago

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TIL corn [maize] needs to be cooked in limewater before its nutrients can be absorbed into the human body. While Native Americans knew this, early New World colonial settlers did not, which resulted in many deaths from malnutrition for those who using it as a staple food.

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NorJ TIL the 1902 Saint-Pierre Volcano eruption killed all 35,000 people in the town except one man who survived because he was the worst prisoner and lived in a solitary confinement cell.
RWY1 TIL that Alfred Nobel, who stabilized Nitroglycerin, was told by his Doctor to eat NG to treat his heart complications. He refused. Decades later, NG proved to be effective in reducing the blockages that lead to a heart attack. The scientist that discovered this was awarded the Nobel Prize.
v11VL TIL There's a service called "Cleaning for a Reason" in the U.S. and Canada that cleans the houses of women with cancer for free so they can focus on their health.
5bMP TIL an intersex athlete representing Poland won the 100 meter dash gold medal in the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles and her “sexually ambiguous genitalia” (due to a chromosomal disorder known as mosaicism) was not discovered until the autopsy following her 1980 murder in Cleveland.
epBQk TIL that Ken Norton was such a dominant fighter that he defeated Ali in their first match, breaking his jaw. The second match Ali won. When it came to the third match, Ali won again but both Ali and Norton felt that Norton was the better boxer.