› added 6 years ago

377

TIL Cocaine is still used in surgeries and hospitals as a local anesthetic for the nose and mouth during procedures, and can be used to stem nasal hemorrhaging in an emergency situation. It is still endorsed by The American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery for medical use.

6pBW TIL that Tom Moore Jr, a member of the Texas House of Representatives, introduced an April Fools resolution to illustrate how some of his colleagues didn’t read things they voted on. The bill passed, officially commending The Boston Strangler for his work in population control.
vPb04 TIL during WWII, the US military tested mustard gas on Japanese American, Puerto Rican, and African American soldiers. Rollin Edwards recalled: "It felt like you were on fire... Guys started screaming... It took all the skin off your hands."
KYVWG TIL that Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, the stars of Romeo and Juliet (1968), sued Paramount, alleging they were misled into performing nude scenes. They were 15 and 16 at the time.
KOZbG TIL The Earth loses hundreds of tons of oxygen to space. This happens at places near the poles, called polar cusps where the solar wind can collide with Earth’s atmosphere. Luckily the process will take billions of years to strip away the atmosphere completely.
4X7rw TIL while Alfred Hitchcock was beginning production on The Birds in August 1961, coincidentally, the California seaside town of Capitola was struck by thousands of crazed seabirds