› added 2 years ago

126

TIL The space burial company Celestis will include DNA from presidents George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan on their upcoming memorial flight to be launched in deep space this year.

AN6Bo Today I learned that women's soccer was banned in many countries from the 1940s to the 1970s. In England, the ban began as early as 1921, with England's Football Association stating that "the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged."
9LEm TIL - Nikola Tesla was a proponent of an imposed selective breeding version of eugenics. Eugenics is the belief and practice which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population.
6EODJ TIL that happy-go-lucky parody musician Weird Al Yankovic once recorded a diss track after his ex-girlfriend broke up with him. The song One More Minute describes all the horrible things he'd rather do than stay with her, and in the song's music video he tears up a picture of her on camera.
epk9D TIL about Leah Betts, a girl who made headlines after dying from taking a single ecstasy pill, did not die directly from the drug. Instead, she died from drinking 7 liters of water in 90 minutes. Ecstasy causes water retention, which can make even slightly high water consumption fatal.
jNJjE TIL that nearly 1/4th of all Caucasian service members of the Union Army were foreign-born, coming from countries such as Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, and Russia among others. 9.7% of the Union Army were African American freedmen from the north, half being ex-slaves.