› added 4 years ago

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TIL the "golden spike" the last spike hammered into the transcontinental railroad, was immediately removed and given to railroad baron Leland Stanford who put on display in Palo Alto, California.

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via reddit.com

8e0oX TIL There's a parasite that affects salmon that is related to jellyfish and is the only multicellular animal that doesn't need oxygen. It's been hypothesized that they initially were jellyfish cancer that escaped their host and evolved separately.
X0J9X TIL: three different cardiac surgeons (Norwood, Glenn, Fontan) independently came up with surgeries to fix babies’ congenital heart defects. Nowadays the surgeries are done one after another as part of one mega treatment (“staged” reconstruction)
ADpNd TIL that an Austrian Diplomat writing an antisemitic book about the evilness of Jews came to a different conclusion before it was published, declaring that "antisemitism amounted to nothing more credible than fanatical religious hatred"
BgV6d TIL McDonald’s was accused of using NORAID to covertly fund the Provisional IRA. The source of these rumors was eventually traced to a CNN talk show that praised NORAID for its generous IRAs.
Wko18 TIL that for years a man deliberately infected himself with tape worms to help treat his ulcerative colitis, a common bowel disease. Doctors found that after infection areas of his colon started producing mucos again which is key to healing and IL-22 a molecule that promotes epithelial growth.