› added 5 years ago

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TIL that on December 10th, 1963, 15 days after it was lit, the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame in Washington, D.C. was accidentally extinguished by a group of Catholic schoolchildren who were sprinkling it with holy water.

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V84m TIL A simple laser procedure can turn brown eyes blue
yWgw TIL there is an island in the Pacific of 300 people, no longer than 750m, where a Polynesian people live at a population density equalling that of Bangladesh. The fact that the island’s ecosystem hasn’t been negatively impacted has attracted the attention of sustainability scientists.
oBnVK TIL that Finland was the first nation in the world that implemented universal suffrage (in 1906) and allowed all adult citizens to run for office, regardless of sex or race, and thus was the first true democracy in the world. The following year, the first female MPs in world history were elected.
pYnlN TIL that carriers of Phenylketonuria, an inherited genetic disorder of the metabolism, are protected against the fungal toxin Ochratoxin A that occurs in grains. This accounts for the persistence of the allele in certain populations: it confers a "selective advantage."
ewOJ TIL that a Singaporean pilot, Tsu Whey Ming, committed murder/suicide by intentionally crashing the 737-300 he was piloting, killing all 104 people on board, and that the Indonesian authorities covered up the report prompting the U.S. NTSB, in an unprecedented move, to publicly contradict them