› added 5 years ago

61

TIL about Zell Kravinsky, who donated his kidney to a poor African American man. He calculated the chances of dying from the procedure at 1 in 4,000, and said "to withhold a kidney from someone who would otherwise die means valuing one’s own life at 4,000 times that of a stranger".

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

XE0ZD TIL Pastafarians in Wisconsin are allowed to wear their headdresses in their driver's license photos
n1RB TIL: George Washington was a hemp farmer, and his diary included notes about separating male plants from females, necessary for the females to produce THC
6Ewxw TIL the Atakapa people in SW Louisiana survived hurricanes by tying themselves up to live oak trees using grape and rattan vines. In 1830, the Atakapa begged a colonist to tie himself and his family high in a live oak tree for their safety; they refused and he and his family drowned.
OoVea TIL in 1914 the Puerto Rican Congress Voted Unanimously for Independence from the US; the US Government Ignored the Vote
pxAp TIL Tesla once paid an overdue hotel bill with a model of his “death beam”, warning hotel staff to never open it. After his death in 1943 the box was pried open and found to contain nothing but harmless old electrical components.