› added 9 years ago

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TIL that we say “red heads” instead of a more appropriate “orange heads” because we needed a word to describe redheads before we needed a word for the uncommon color of orange.

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9YPLm TIL that in the Rosenstrasse protests in 1943 during the middle of WWII, thousands of non-Jewish German women protested the deportation of their Jewish husbands to the concentration camps. The protests were successful, but it was the only mass protest in Nazi Germany against the deportation of Jews.
eyo5 TIL that in order to prove that the bacteria H. pylori could cause stomach ulcers, an Australian doctor named Barry J. Marshall drank a culture of H. pylori, developed an ulcer, and successfully treated it with antibiotics. He won a Nobel Prize for it in 2005.
E18bW TIL that when a high school in Florida pulled Cory Doctorow's book "Little Brother" because it 'questioned authority', the author had free copies of the book emailed to every Grade 9 and 10 student at the school.
GAoy5 TIL, when walking into a bar in England, Jimi Hendrix and his band were told they weren't welcome by a bartender who said "Sorry, mates, we can't serve your sort in here,". Hendrix thought it was because he was black, but it was because they were mistaken for circus clowns.
Lko5m TIL when Japanese pole vaulters Shuhei Nishida and Sueo Oe tied for silver at the 1936 Olympics they refused a tie-breaker. The silver was arbitrarily awarded to Nishida. They had their medals cut in half and then welded together so they each had one "friendship medal" of half silver, half bronze.