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TIL Dr. August Bier, a German physician, pioneered spinal anesthesia using cocaine injections. To test its numbing effects, Bier injected cocaine into his assistant’s spine, beat his legs with hammers, pulled his testicles, drove a needle into his femur, and even ripped out his pubic hair.

YJOW TIL Snoop Dogg and David Beckham are such good friends that Snoop sends Beckham his new music before it’s officially released.
9YXKX TIL: In 2010 a land dispute between India and Bangladesh was solved by rising sea levels. The New Moore Island/South Talpatti in the Sunderbans was completely submerged by water and vanished thus solving the dispute.
Bkmx TIL that the Hindenburg disaster had more survivors than victims, wasn’t the deadliest airship accident at the time, and the emotional “Oh, the humanity!” audio report wasn’t live, but was a radio broadcast from later that night, and subsequently overlaid on the newsreel videos after the fact
4X56o TIL that Microsoft patented a chat-bot that would let you talk to deceased people. It would cull "social data" such as images, messages and voice data from the chosen individual and that data would be used to train a chat-bot to "converse and interact in the personality of the specific person"
nWxpP TIL about American vet Michael Boatwright, who woke up with amnesia and could only speak Swedish. He later started a new life in Sweden but died by suicide. Clues to his personal history spanned three continents