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TIL That to run for President of France you need a bank account

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4XbLN TIL about Ranavalona I (born Rabodoandrianampoinimerina (also called Ramavo) a queen of Madagascar in the 1800s. Her system of civil justice killed at least 2.5 M people, effectively halving the population.
nW68P TIL that the landmark pamphlet "Understanding AIDS" was the single largest mass mailing in American history. Spearheaded by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, it reached 107 million American households, and set standards for sex education regarding the disease. 80% of people read at least part of it.
QN5mX TIL that Viacom/Paramount had a first-look option on buying Marvel Entertainment when Ike Perlmutter wanted to sell the company off but Viacom CEO Phillipe Dauman turned down an acquisition due to the company's cost-cutting moves. The result was that Disney ended up acquiring Marvel for $4B in 2009.
KOR59 TIL The world is made by the left-brained (right handed), prefers denotative language, what is known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualised, explicit. A right hemisphere (left handed) modus operandi would yield a changing, evolving, linked, implicit world, the living not the mechanical.
N7gL6 Researchers in Sweden have uncovered evidence of a behaviour never seen before in ancient hunter-gatherers: the mounting of decapitated heads onto stakes. The grim discovery challenges our understanding of European Mesolithic culture and how these early humans handled their dead.