› added 7 years ago

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TIL in one of Thomas Jefferson's letters to James Madison in 1789 he stated that the Constitution and laws should expire after 19 years. This was to allow the new generations to learn from the past and change accordingly, it was also to prevent older generations from "binding" subsequent ones.

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yQk1v TIL students at Oberlin College can rent original paintings by Picasso, Monet, and Dalí (among others) to hang in their dorm rooms for $5 per semester
Meb8A TIL that rats were thought to be carriers of the bubonic plague and that in Sydney, around 200,000 rats were caught to eliminate the disease.
E88w TIL Adam Reed, the creator of Archer, was in a cafe and found himself unable to approach a beautiful woman seated nearby. Instead of talking to her, he conjured up the idea of a spy who “would have a perfect line.”
kJVWm TIL Garth Brooks once tried to donate part of his liver to Rodeo man and country singer Chris LeDoux upon LeDoux's diagnosis with primary sclerosing cholangitis
ne0lb TIL about Operation Mincemeat, a British deception plot to fool the Nazis into thinking that the Allies were going to invade Greece instead of Italy by planting deceptive information on a corpse on the Spanish coast with the hopes that Spain would pass it on to German Intelligence.