› added 7 years ago

64

TIL the Grandfather Clause. After the American Civil War, South States made literacy tests to prevent former black slaves from voting. When whites failed them too, an exception was given to anyone whose Grandfather was eligible to vote. All whites had eligible grandfathers and few blacks did.

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

gpm4 TIL the first left/right ideological debate in American media history is considered to be a pamphlet war in the 1790’s between Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke over the topic of the then ongoing French Revolution
GYJ4N TIL that 'figure skating' is named after a requirement that skaters draw figures in the ice, such as loops, figure-8s, and swirls, called "compulsory figures". Once making up the majority of a skater's score, figures were slowly reduced and eventually eliminated from competition entirely by 1990.
m1XXv TIL James Cameron was in talks to direct a Spider-Man movie in the mid-nineties. Leonardo DiCaprio would star in a "gritty" take on the story, but subsequent lawsuits--and Marvel declaring bankruptcy in 1996--canned the project.
JNx4 TIL in 2010 a Xbox Live user was banned because he declared Fort Gay as his Hometown. Microsoft apologised later, because the place is real.
KYK66 TIL about PCR, which is a technique to make billions of copies of a specific DNA from a very small sample. The mix containing DNA is repeatedly heated and cooled, this breaks the DNA molecule and then duplicates it exponentially. The secret? A bacteria living in hot springs has a special enzyme