Post * 16lvW — Curious Curator

› added 9 months ago

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TIL In 1941 Rosemary Kennedy, the sister of John F. Kennedy, had a lobotomy at age 23. She spent the rest of her life incapacitated, and died 63 years later at age 86.

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4XAXb TIL during the Jim Crow era in the U.S., the turban was used by people of color for "confounding the color lines"—in other words, if you could pass yourself off as something other than black, you might circumvent some amount of discrimination.

LQgYp TIL that Celine Dion once refused an award (Anglophone Artist of the Year)

9Rpr TIL in 1933, a University of Alabama professor voluntarily allowed a black widow spider to bite him as scientists recorded him suffering in agony for three days. Before this there were skeptics who believed black widows were not dangerous to humans.

nejLY TIL that the remote Ascension Island in the Atlantic was known as a barren, desert island when it was discovered in the 1700s, but today boasts one of the world's largest artificial forests, planned by Charles Darwin and botanist Joseph Hooker in order to make the island livable.

KOX74 TIL that heavy metal band Black Sabbath started as a blues band called Earth, but changed their name after seeing the Boris Karloff horror film "Black Sabbath". They liked "that people paid money to be frightened".