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TIL that American psychologist George Stratton conducted experiments in which he either wore glasses inverting images both upside-down and left-right or a contraption that forced him to see his body from above. He found that it took only a few days for his brain to adapt to the new orientations.

GYlj4 TIL Curious George, the beloved children's book and its authors, escaped the Nazis and the Holocaust by escaping France by bicycle. Margaret and H.A. Rey biked 439 miles from Paris to the Spain border with little else besides their unpublished manuscript about a mischievous monkey.
5VLWQ TIL following backlash to the Morgenthau plan for Germany, President Roosevelt claimed "I have not approved anything like that. I am sure I have not. ... I have no recollection of this at all". Upon being read back what he had signed, Roosevelt said he had "no idea how he could have initialed this"
kJdlB TIL the human brain remains half awake when sleeping in a new environment for the first time. When we sleep in a new place, our brains are actually in survival mode, only turning half off, with one hemisphere remaining more “awake” than the other
vpD TIL that religious authorities in the United Arab Emirates issued a fatwā against Pokémon because it encouraged gambling, and was based on the theory of evolution, “a Jewish-Darwinist theory, that conflicts with the truth about humans and with Islamic principles”.
4kpB5 TIL John B. Stetson invented the cowboy hat after moving out West to treat his tuberculosis.