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TIL that bulimia is socially contagious. Fiji had never had a report of anyone with an eating disorder, but within three years after television was introduced in 1995, a study found 11% of Fiji’s adolescent girls had purged their food at least once. By 2007, it was 45%.

d86Aj TIL the dissections of Da Vinci began an artistic style called écorché (flayed in French), which graphically depicts the body without skin. This musculoskeletal blueprint for postures and gestures aided Renaissance realism. In the Enlightenment, mass-produced sculptures standardized medical studies
Lkkgv TIL: Matches used to be made with toxic white phosphorus. It was so toxic workers often contracted "Phossy Jaw," causing their face to rot away and their bones to literally glow in the dark.
X00nX TIL: In 1793, Diego Marín Aguilera flapped the wings of his man-powered glider, reached a height of about 5m and flew over 300m before crashing because of a broken metal joint. The inhabitants of the town believed him a lunatic, heretic, or a fraud, and burned his "demonic" flapping-wing creation.
POmO TIL the declassified SR-71 pilot’s manual states that it can cruise above mach 3.4… climbs faster than mach 3… and weighs a mind blowing “143,000 lbs”…more than the German King Tiger tank. It first flew in 1962 and is also the first stealth aircraft.
j6dKp TIL Fredric Wertham's 'Seduction of the Innocent' in 1954 criticized Batman comics for alleged homosexual tones. This led to a 'sunnier Batman' era , with characters like Batwoman and Batgirl introduced to counter the claims about Batman and Robin being gay.