› added 8 years ago

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TIL When President Carter supported racial equality in the 1950s, his peanut farm was boycotted. He ran against the Sheriff for a new local senate seat, losing to the Sheriff. Apon challenging the loss, they discovered his opponent was committing voter fraud. A new election was held, and Carter won

mxMRR TIL the reason it's called "the birds and the bees" is because it's a metaphor for naturally-occuring events. The "bees" part comes from bees depositing the flowers (a reference to fertilization), and the "birds" part comes from female birds laying eggs (a reference to ovulation).
a87NA TIL in 1939, Walt Disney won an Oscar for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. He was presented his Oscar, plus seven mini-Oscar statues by Shirley Temple.
e0Ppb TIL during a visit to Japan in 1932, Charlie Chaplin was nearly assassinated in an ultranationalist coup d'état. While the Prime Minister was assassinated in his residence, Chaplin likely survived because he was watching a sumo wrestling match with the Prime Minister's son.
yM4X TIL that Dr. Jack Kevorkian proposed that inmates condemned to death be allowed to choose “medical experimentation under complete anaesthesia (at the time appointed for administering the penalty) as a form of execution in lieu of conventional methods prescribed by law.”
4XvQg TIL that many small towns finance their governments by issuing traffic tickets. In hundreds of US counties fines are used to fund 10-20% of the local government budget.