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712

TIL Michelangelo had forged Roman antiques to help start his career as an artist

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XEJlr TIL during the middle Ages saffron was so expensive some traders would try to increase their profits by bulking up the herb with yellow marigold petals. When authorities in Nuremberg, where the herb was mainly traded, found out about these tainted parcels of saffron, the traders were burned alive.
KOM8a TIL chickens are great at reducing the tick population in a given area. Scientists estimate that a single chicken can eat 22113 ticks in a single season
yQB88 TIL the use of Hun as a pejorative term for Germans comes from a speech made by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1900 to troops going to fight the Boxer Rebellion in which he referenced Attila and his Huns making themselves feared in China
9lvG TIL “Step on a crack…” originally ended with “and your mother will turn black.”
lJLa TIL that the suicidal jumpers off the Golden Gate Bridge that survived the fall reported a complete change of heart while falling “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.“