› added 1 year ago

56

TIL Bram stoker's notes for Dracula contain little research into Vlad the Impaler. Much of the modern relation to Vlad the Impaler rely on Raymond McNally's 1972 book, In Search of Dracula. Dracula may have been more based on the repeatedly killed Abhartach of Irish folklore.

6E4j7 TIL the origins of Chemotherapy come from mustard gas during WWII when scientists realized that it damaged DNA and decreased the formation of blood cells by the bone marrow. They wondered if similar compounds would have a similar effect on cancer cell proliferation. And so Chemo was born.
wokr1 TIL that that TRW engineers Don Nelson and "Dick" Pick invented the Generalized Information Retrieval Language System, aka GIRLS
awyro TIL Frankie Lymon, who wrote and sang "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" at the age of 13, died at the age of 25. He was married three times, became addicted to heroin, got straight, then on the eve of recording what would be his comeback record, died of a heroin overdose.
yQy9J TIL that chemistry graduate student Barry Kidston gave himself Parkinson's disease after ingesting a compound he synthesized for a legal high. An impurity he neglected is toxic to dopamine neurons, which is responsible for the effect. He was treated, but died of a cocaine overdose 18 months later.
dDD8d TIL in 1955, actor Ray Liotta was adopted from an orphanage at the age of six months. He hired a private detective to locate his biological mother in the 2000s, and learned that he had one biological sister, one biological half-brother, and five biological half-sisters.