› added 5 years ago

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TIL there wasn't a single credible report of American soldiers being spat on upon returning from Vietnam - Nixon administration made it up to deflect the narrative of the war

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LkldZ TIL the English word weird originally meant 'having the power to control fate', which is why Shakespeare named his witches in Macbeth The Weird Sisters. Later depictions of them dressed in odd and strange ways led to the current definition of the word.
09yR TIL Christopher Reeve went from benching 40 lbs to 320 lbs and gained 33 pounds while shooting Superman.
yVXow TIL You can have a heart attack without having any blocked arteries, it’s called a MINOCA(myocardial infarction with non-obstructive coronary arteries)
GAR9N TIL That early model M-16s were so prone to jams and malfunctions, mostly due to the failure to ship them with cleaning kits and ammunition which fouled the operating mechanism, that the US military produced a comic book detailing proper field stripping instructions for the weapon.
6Erow TIL In ancient Greece, an “idiot” was anyone who didn’t participate in political or public arenas. It comes from the word idios, meaning “self” or a selfish person who ignored political debate and didn’t participate in politics. As the word implies, it was someone who was “separated from the whole.”