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73

TIL that Emperor Nero competed in the Olympic Games. Nero did terribly and was nearly killed in a chariot race, but was nonetheless declared the winner in every event he competed in.

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l9wK TIL that shortly before the outbreak of World War I, Grigori Rasputin publicly spoke out against Russia going to war with Germany. Stating: “If Russia goes to war, it will be the end of the monarchy, of the Romanovs and of Russian institutions.“
7rg4x TIL Covert consciousness "is consciousness that cannot be detected by bedside examination. Studies . . . suggest that approximately 10 percent of those believed to be in a vegetative state or a low-level minimally conscious state . . . can actually follow commands during functional MRI or EEG tests"
8e8x8 TIL the American Chestnut Tree was king of the Eastern U.S. forests that could grow 120ft (36.5m) tall and 16ft (4.9m) across until a blight arrived in 1904. It took only 40 short years for the disease to bring to extinction the estimated 4 billion ancient giants towering from Georgia to Maine.
JZdB TIL that dating was such a novelty in the early 1900s that women were often misperceived as prostitutes and arrested for letting a man buy them dinner
DQKJg TIL the American debt in 1946 was over 106% of the nation's GDP