› added 6 years ago

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TIL that the longest filibuster in history was conducted by Strom Thurmond at over 24 hours, in an attempt to stop a bill that would give the constitutional rights to millions of African Americans. After he died, it came out that he had secretly had a black daughter.

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QNWYX TIL of Flavius Claudius Julianus (Julian), the last Pagan emperor of Rome, and how he was the last pagan ruler after 312CE and attempted to reinstate paganism after Christianity had become the sole State religion.
jNNXv TIL a group of small (1 mm) adult Caenorhabditis elegans worms, living in petri dishes enclosed in aluminum canisters, survived reentry and impact with the ground and were recovered weeks after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003, found alive on April 28 of the same year.
5Ve7Q TIL the piano failed to catch on when it was first invented in 1700. It was only after Johann Zumpe made improvements and J.S. Bach socially promoted the piano in 1768 that it eventually displaced the harpsichord as the preferred keyboard instrument.
wLZ4E TIL Carbon dating anything past the 1950's is likely to be unreliable because of the nuclear weapons testing artificially altering the proportion of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere
kOkkd TIL that only 17% of restaurants fail within their first year, despite the commonly touted figure of 9 / 10