› added 7 months ago

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TIL during 1904 Olympics men's marathon winner was disqualified as he rode in a car for part of the race. The actual winner was near collapse and hallucinating, an effect of being fed brandy, raw eggs, and strychnine by his trainers. The fourth-place finisher took a nap after eating spoiled apples.

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4XlyJ TIL that black essayist James Baldwin had an 1,884-page FBI file, one of the longest in Bureau history. Truman Capote, one of the most-suspected writers of the era, only had a 110-page file
nWyWo TIL there’s an energy drink called “Cocaine”, released in 2006 and banned 6 months later. Online sales of Cocaine then quadrupled. Redux Beverages rebranded “Cocaine” to “No Name” to get around a temporary ban. The name was changed back in February of 2008, and Cocaine can be bought today online.
ANLDw TIL in 2020, it was announced that AlphaFold, a neural network based on DeepMind AI, can predict a protein's final shape based solely on its amino-acid chain with an accuracy of 90%. Predicting the structure of a polypeptide from its sequence is considered of the greatest challenges in biology.
PWZJ TIL Bagged salad was a way to sell misshapen but edible lettuce. Bagged lettuce can sell for twice the price of heads of lettuce
69L8X TIL that in 1949, a NJ gas station owner started the first cheap self-serve station in the state; rival stations tried to intimidate him into closing, but when even a drive-by shooting didn't work, they got the legislature to pass a law banning self-service that is still on the books today