› added 9 years ago

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TIL that a father in South Carolina almost lost custody of his infant daughter when she was put up for adoption by her mother. 33 states require unmarried fathers to register as ‘responsible fathers’ in order to retain the right to be notified of an adoption or termination of parental rights action.

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kaAB TIL Tibor Rubin, a Holocaust Survivor, fought for the US in Korea. Once he held off an enemy assault for 24 hours alone. Later wounded and captured, he would risk certain death by stealing food from his captors and giving medical aid to his fellow prisoners, saving over 40 lives in the process.
rLpe TIL that a man named Laszlo Polgar developed a method to raise child prodigies. He wrote a book on it, married a language teacher, and they raised two of the 11 current female chess grandmasters in the world.
jNMba TIL in the 1880s, 20% percent of autopsies performed in Iceland revealed echinococcosis, a type of tapeworm that can be passed from dogs to humans, causing blindness and severe complications. As a result, the city of Reykjavik had a ban on keeping dogs as pets for decades.
b1a0 TIL serial killer Rodney Alcala acted as his own attorney in his trial. For five hours he interrogated himself on the witness stand, asking questions addressed to “Mr. Alcala” in a deep voice and answering them in his normal voice.
6Eba8 Today I learned that the Royal Navy's Baltic fleet in 1855 consisted of 93 ships.