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TIL that President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

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yQZQp TIL John Cleese based the character of Basil Fawlty on Donald Sinclair, an eccentric hotel owner who’d accommodated Monty Python. Sinclair threw Eric Idle’s briefcase out of a window because he mistook it for a bomb, and criticised Terry Gilliam’s table manners because he was American.
kJmg TIL that, according to a June 2012 Gallup poll, 46% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago.
MgRA TIL there is no evidence that iron maidens were invented in the Middle Ages or even used for torture. Instead they were pieced together in the 18th century from several artifacts found in museums in order to create spectacular objects intended for (commercial) exhibition.
BDlr TIL that dextromethorphan (aka Robitussin) is a dissociative drug, and works by acting on the brain to raise the threshold at which it thinks it needs to cough.
rRPG4 TIL Chance the Rapper continued his SNL skit character Lazlo Holmes, a hilarious uninformed Hockey announcer into a series of real interviews with NHL players and coaches.