› added 3 months ago

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TIL the name "Fannie Mae" comes from the abbreviation for Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA)

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JYk98 TIL the first known mention of the word abracadabra was in a second century AD book (written by a physician) which prescribed that malaria sufferers wear an amulet containing the word written in the form of a triangle and the power of the amulet would make lethal diseases go away.
xLEo TIL that Disney rejected Back to the Future because the mother/son storyline was “not appropriate”
OQA6 TIL that Martine Rothblatt made millions by inventing satellite radio. When her daughter was diagnosed w/ pulmonary hypertension, she earned a PhD in bioethics & formed a biotech company that licensed drugs to treat her daughter’s illness from other companies, making them much more widely available
OG7Y TIL that some birds can be born and exist as gynandromorphs, meaning that they have both genders as well as male and female appearances, divided laterally
vPKOx TIL there used to be a 4 legged whale with webbed feet that sometimes hunted and killed stuff on land