› added 6 years ago

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TIL there's a town in Newfoundland named Dildo that's been around for over 300 years.

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j6x1n TIL about parfilage, a fashionable pastime among upper class ladies in 18th century France in which they would painstakingly destroy textile goods, thread by thread in a deliberate reversal of normal "women's work", sometimes even having things made specifically for that purpose
xDM0 TIL Andrew Jackson participated in the American Revolution informally at age 13 as a courier, survived being captured by the British, and was the only member of his family to survive the revolution, becoming an orphan at age 14.
jN6vp TIL the expression "blood is thicker than water" originally had the exact opposite meaning: "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb."
L1y0 TIL Scientists don’t know how a squid color-camouflages its skin, as they’re completely colorblind.
pYeX8 TIL that President William McKinley always wore a red carnation for good luck but sometimes gave it out as a memento. When greeting the crowd in 1901, he handed a 12-year-old girl, Myrtle, his the bloom off his lapel. Minutes later, he was fatally shot by a man in the crowd.