› added 9 months ago

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Today I learned that Stephen Duncan, the largest slaveholder during the civil war (and second overall in US History) was actually pro-unionist and was ostracized by the confederates he lived with in Mississippi

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via reddit.com

6EvwQ TIL that during the Irish Potato Famine, the poor were hired for useless construction projects called 'famine follies' in order to provide them with work that would not take existing work away from other workers. These included roads in the middle of nowhere, between two seemingly random points.
p7AN TIL according the quantum mechanical experiments, the future determines the present
womZ1 TIL in the 1980s, NASA had a 1-900 number which charged $2 for the first minute and $.45 for each additional minute. It allowed callers to listen in on a mission status report and mid-flight press conferences, and horrifyingly, thousands of them heard the Challenger explosion in real time.
JVB4 TIL Breastmilk contains endocannabinoids, analogues of those in cannabis, which help the infant to become hungry and eat
GYaM7 TIL the inability to recognise faces is called Prosopagnosia (face blindness).