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TIL a writer by the name of “Lisa Holst” created an article in 1993 that “around 8 spiders crawl into your mouth every year whilst you sleep”, but the whole thing was made up to prove that the internet was gullible and doesn’t fact check its sources.

V5Zk TIL the donating public, not big foundations or corporations, is responsible for roughly 90% of all donations in the US
Mlv0 Today I learned that in 1983, Russian Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov heroically prevented a full retaliatory nuclear attack against the United States and NATO allies when his Oko nuclear early warning system detected 6 missiles coming from the U.S. and he immediately declared it a false alarm.
GAWV7 TIL that when the Viking leaders asked King Harold Godwinson what land they would get, they were told they would receive “seven feet of English ground”, enough to bury them in.
Me997 TIL Truman was among the poorest U.S. presidents, with a net worth much less than $1 million. His financial situation contributed to the doubling of the presidential salary to $100,000 in 1949. In addition, the presidential pension was created in 1958 when Truman was again having financial hardship.
R5N4Q TIL that until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Doust Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies.