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TIL in 1984 an 8 year old girl with sickle cell disease developed acute myeloid leukemia. To treat the cancer, the doctors gave her chemo and a stem cell transplant from her sibling. Not only did this cure her cancer, but it cured her SCD too. She remains disease free nearly three decades later.

Read more ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

via reddit.com

QgoL TIL that Moammar Gadhafi had an odd obsession with Condoleeza Rice, once gaving her a videotape of her meetings with various leaders, set to specially composed music entitled “Black Flower in the White House”. She said later that “It was weird, but at least it wasn’t raunchy”.
7rjgX TIL the Guinness Book of World Records lists Deinococcus radiodurans bacterium as the world's toughest organism because of its ability to survive extreme radiation, cold, dehydration, vacuum and acid. These bacteria were found to survive 3 years in outer space based on studies conducted on the ISS.
ekRJ TIL after a test preview for Apollo 13, an audience member said he disliked the movie because it had a “typical Hollywood ending” and that the crew would never have survived.
OovvL TIL that Immanuel Kant promoted "scientific" racism, giving a hierarchy of four races: white Europeans "always advance to perfection", yellow Asians "can never reach the level of abstract concepts", black Africans "can be educated but only as servants", and red Amerindians "cannot be educated"
ndpB TIL: When an F18 is catapulted from its carrier, the pilot doesn’t actually take the controls. The acceleration is so brisk that the pilot would pitch down thinking that the nose was to high and crash into the ocean. They instead just hold handle they call the “towel rail”