› added 1 year ago

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TIL Aristotle wrote the heart has only three chambers, and that tiny organisms can be generated spontaneously out of inanimate matter. It is now known that the left atrium is very difficult to observe and took Louis Pasteur to prove that growth doesn't happen in a container without micro-organisms

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neYEW TIL: 19th century investor, Jay Gould, mastered short selling stocks by selling borrowed stocks and then publishing negative rumors about the company he borrowed them from in a newspaper he owned so he could buy the stocks back at a profit.
8aPyX TIL In 1957, a terminal cancer patient was given a worthless drug that caused his tumors to “melt like snowballs on a hot stove.” When he found out it was proven worthless, his cancer returned. He was given a placebo version and it went away again. Got truth again and died.
epxrJ TIL Mahatma Gandhi's first name was actually Mohandas. His followers called him Mahatma, Sanskrit for "the great-souled one"
PYKdG TIL: England use to have a public holiday known as 'Pinch Bum Day' (officially Oak Apple Day). On the anniversary of the restoration of King (1660) it was customary to wear oak leaves, anyone who failed to do so risked getting pinched, pelted with eggs or thrashed with stinging nettles.
yVBmp TIL about aaa, a constellation of urological problems described on multiple ancient Egyptian medical papyri. Many archaeologists believe aaa was what is now known as urinary schistosomiasis, a parasitic infection.