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TIL There's a culture of walking around barefoot in New Zealand

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Zwpp TIL a man born premature with cerebral palsy, was unable to swallow on his own until the age of 1, is blind, was unable to speak or walk until the age of 16, began playing Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No.1 on piano in the middle of the night at age 16. He now can play any song after hearing it only once.
Wkd6A TIL in 1959, rather than integrate, Prince Edward County in Virginia closed all of their public schools for FIVE YEARS. White children attended state-subsidized "private schools". No provision was made for educating the county's black children.
OGl4X TIL that after alleged Catholic involvement in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the US cut off diplomatic relations with the Holy See (the Pope) and did not restore them until 1984.
ADO4B TIL that out of the 1,000 deaths in the Kamaishi City tsunami, only 5 were school-aged children. 3,000 children from two elementary schools were saved because one professor who survived a 2004 tsunami insisted on rigorous tsunami evacuation training.
e05rb TIL Nora Ephron (once married to Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein) would regularly reveal the identity of informant Deep Throat to anyone who asked her. No one, apart from her sons, believed her.