› added 4 years ago

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TIL about xenodiagnosis - where a bug that would usually carry a disease-carrying organism is allowed to feed on a patient's blood so that its gut can be then examined to try and find the organism and make the diagnosis

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BrExd TIL Cherokee Native Americans began purchasing African slaves in the 1800s to labor on European style plantations and in mines. By the time of the civil war they owned over 8000 slaves who made up 14% of the population in the Cherokee territory.
nW6Qr TIL a woman named Chante Mallard hit an unhoused man named Gregory Biggs, lodging him in her windshield, alive. She drove home and parked in her garage where she let him suffer for days before dying. She was only caught months later because she talked about it at a party.
WkQQ8 TIL looking for publicity for his television, John Logie Baird went to the Daily Express to promote it. The editor was so terrified by his invention he said, "Get rid of a lunatic who's down there. He says he's got a machine for seeing by wireless! Watch him — he may have a razor on him."
WkwA9 TIL bees not only sleep, but also take little bee naps on flowers
yVkkX TIL in 1990 Marge Simpson wrote a letter to First Lady Barbara Bush after Barbara said The Simpsons was ‘the dumbest thing [she] had ever seen’.