› added 4 years ago

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TIL the Kentucky Derby has been held uninterrupted since 1875 even through the Great Depression & both World Wars. Millions of people around the world bet on the race with a wagering total of $209 million in 2017.

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Me8B8 TIL one of the provisions of the earliest English statute is to define what it means to be a bastard.
OlWX TIL that we want to “squeeze cute things to death” because we are too overcome with positive emotion and unable to process it such that we become aggressive.
GY6J7 TIL while Henry David Thoreau is quoted as a major influence by supporters of nonviolent resistance and anarcho-pacifism, he actually did approve of violent behavior by such groups as abolitionists.
BodL TIL when Yvonne Brill, the inventor of the electrothermal hydrazine thruster for rocket propulsion, died, the first line of her New York Times obituary read, “She made a mean beef stroganoff”
X5dD TIL In 1995, Nigeria donated 88 000 doses of meningitis vaccine to its neighbour Niger, but before the authorities realized that these vaccines were fake, about 60 000 people had been “inoculated” with what could just be water.