› added 9 years ago

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TIL the US government spied on Martin Luther King Jr. and even sent a anonymous letter attempting to convince MLK Jr. to kill himself.

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69Pym TIL the Westinghouse Electric Corporation built the first industrial Van de Graaff generator. It was called the Atom Smasher, and looked like a light bulb. It was instrumental in the development of practical nuclear science.
1a89X Til stereotypical cavemen hardly existed as very few Stone Age people lived in caves. Most were nomadic hunter gatherers living in temporary shelters such as tents or huts. Caves just have the best preserved artifacts
r9Jo TIL Benjamin Franklin published a paper where he discovered that America’s population growth was so fast, it would surpass Britain in 100 years. This alarmed British leadership and was a factor in their oppression of the colonies.
QJXNe TIL Disney changed the name of their project "Basil of Baker Street" to The Great Mouse Detective", causing Disney animators to pass around a joke memo blandly renaming old Disney classics. It reached the CEO of Disney, who was furious and demanded to know who wrote the memo. No one squealed.
J1LD1 TIL that the modern standard keyboard layout, QWERTY, was NOT designed to slow typists down but rather to prevent the mechanical typewriters from jamming.